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President Donald Trump took aim at the military industrial complex in an interview with Fox News, saying that while he wants to bring troops home, “they never want to leave, they always want to fight.” The president was discussing Iran and how he prefers to solve tensions economically, but is up against people that would send “thousands of soldiers” into Syria if it was up to them. Hilton had asked the president if he could “reassure people you’re not looking for some kind of conflict in Iran?” His response was far different than his tough tweet about Iran on Sunday. “Well, I’m the one that talks about these wars that are 19 years (long), and people are just there. And don’t kid yourself, you do have a military industrial complex. They do like war,” Trump said in his interview with Fox News’s Steve Hilton.

“You know, In Syria with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100% of the caliphate that doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these crazy people going around, blowing up stores and blowing up things, these are seriously ill people…But I wiped out 100 percent of the caliphate,” Trump continued. “I said, I want to bring our troops back home — the place went crazy. They want to keep– you have people here in Washington, they never want to leave. I said, you know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind, but if it was up to them they’d bring thousands of soldiers in.” Trump added, “someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex.” “They never want to leave, they always want to fight. No. I don’t want to fight, but you do have situations like Iran. You can’t let them have nuclear weapons. You just can’t let that happen,” Trump said.

Back in April of 2018, when the trade war with China was still in its early stages, we explained that among the five “nuclear” options Beijing has to retaliate against the US, one was the block of rare-earth exports to the US, potentially crippling countless US supply chains that rely on these rare commodities, and forcing painful and costly delays in US production as alternative supply pathways had to be implemented. As a result, for many months China watchers expected Beijing to respond to Trump’s tariff hikes by blocking the exports of one or more rare-earths, although fast forwarding one year later this still hasn’t happened. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen, and overnight President Xi Jinping’s visit to a rare earths facility fueled speculation that the strategic materials will soon be weaponized in China’s tit-for-tat war [with] the US.

As Bloomberg reported overnight, shares in JL MAG Rare-Earth surged by the daily limit on Monday after Xinhua said the Chinese president had stopped by the company in Jiangxi, a scripted move designed to telegraph what China could do next. The reason for the dramatic market response is that the presidential visit flags policy priorities, and “rare earths have featured in the escalating trade spat between the U.S. and China.” Specifically, as Bloomberg notes, China raised tariffs to 25% from 10% on American imports, while the U.S. excluded rare earths from its own list of prospective tariffs on roughly $300 billion worth of Chinese goods to be targeted in the next wave of measures. And just in case the White House missed the message, Xi was accompanied on the trip to JL MAG by Liu He, the vice premier who has led the Chinese side in the trade negotiations.

A US federal judge on Monday denied President Donald Trump’s efforts to quash a subpoena from Democratic lawmakers to release years of financial documents dating from before his time in the White House. The decision marked the first time that US courts have waded into the conflict pitting the president against the Democrats who, riding on their newfound majority in the House of Representatives, have opened a raft of probes into Trump. Trump, who says he is the victim of “harassment,” has refused to cooperate in the investigations focused on his tax returns, his finances or matters related to Russian efforts to tip the 2016 election in his favor. US District Judge Amit Mehta refused to block the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subpoena for accounting firm Mazars USA pending litigation.

The lawmakers’ April 15 request for records dating back to 2011 followed testimony by Trump’s one-time lawyer Michael Cohen that his boss would often change the estimated value of his assets and liabilities on financial statements as he felt was needed for various purposes. On April 22, Trump and affiliated organizations and entities filed suit, requesting that the court declare the subpoena “invalid and unenforceable” as it questioned the legislative validity of the Democrats’ demands.] “So long as Congress investigates on a subject matter on which ‘legislation could be had,’ Congress acts as contemplated by Article I of the Constitution,” which guarantees the body its legislative powers, Mehta said. “Applying those principles here compels the conclusion that President Trump cannot block the subpoena to Mazars.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Monday dismissed comparisons between the rise of business debt to record levels in recent years and the conditions in U.S. mortgage markets that preceded the 2007-to-2009 economic crisis, but even so said caution was warranted. Comparisons to the years before the financial crisis are “not fully convincing” Powell said at an Atlanta Federal Reserve bank conference on financial markets, since the growth of debt seems in line with economic growth, debt service costs remain low, and the financial system is better positioned to absorb losses.

Despite that, he pointed to the lack of transparency about the funding sources and ultimate holders of corporate debt, and to risks that any economic downturn could worsen if indebted borrowers begin to fail as reasons for caution. “Business debt has clearly reached a level that should give businesses and investors reason to pause and reflect,” Powell said, with corporate borrowing at a record level of around 35 percent of corporate assets. Though growth in corporate debt has slowed lately, “another sharp increase…could increase vulnerabilities appreciably,” Powell said. That concern is another reason the Fed may be reluctant to cut interest rates, since lower borrowing costs could prompt firms to take on more debt.

The amazing thing with Deutsche Bank shares is this: Since 2007, so for 12 years, bottom fishers have been routinely taken out the back and shot, every time, with relentless regularity – as have big institutional investors, from Chinese conglomerates to state-owned wealth funds, that thought they were picking the bottom. A similar concept applies to European banks in general. May 2007 was the high point. And it has been brutal ever since – 12 years of misery. Deutsche Bank shares dropped another 2.9% on Monday in Frankfurt, and closed at a new historic low of €6.64 after hitting €6.61 intraday. This time, the blame was put on UBS analysts that finally stamped “sell” on the stock, replacing their “neutral” rating. Deutsche Bank’s market cap is now down to just €13.8 billion. Shares have plunged 39% over the past 12 months and 60% since January 2018 (data via Investing.com):

The bank has been subject to years of revelations of shenanigans that span the palette. Once a conservative bank that primarily served its German business clientele in Germany and overseas, it decided to turn itself into a Wall Street high-flyer that caused its shares to skyrocket until May 2007, when it got tangled up in the Financial Crisis that then led to a slew of apparently never-ending hair-raising revelations, settlements with regulators, and huge fines. Since their death-spiral began in May 2007, Deutsche Bank shares have lost over 94% of their value. The UBS downgrade to sell came just in the nick of time:

[..] the stocks of European banks, as depicted by the Stoxx 600 Banks index – which tracks 44 representative banks – dropped 1.6% on Monday to the lowest level since January 9, 2019, and has plunged 30% since the end of January 2018. But going back 12 years, the plunge takes on different dimensions and parallels that of Deutsche Bank, with the index down 74% since May 2007, just bumping along the bottom, from hopeless to hope and back to hopeless:

In Sweden, prosecutors have applied to the Swedish courts to issue a warrant for Julian’s arrest. There is a tremendous back story to that simple statement. The European Arrest Warrant must be issued from one country to another by a judicial authority. The original Swedish request for Assange’s extradition was not issued by any court, but simply by the prosecutor. This was particularly strange, as the Chief Prosecutor of Stockholm had initially closed the case after deciding there was no case to answer, and then another, highly politically motivated, prosecutor had reopened the case and issued a European Arrest Warrant, without going to any judge for confirmation. [..] immediately after Assange lost his case against the warrant in the Supreme Court, the British government changed the law to specify that future warrants must be from a judge and not a prosecutor.

[..] The judgement against Assange in the UK Supreme Court on the point of whether the Swedish Prosecutor constituted a “judicial authority” hinged on a completely unprecedented and frankly incredible piece of reasoning. Lord Phillips concluded that in the English text of the EWA treaty “judicial authority” could not include the Swedish prosecutor, but that in the French version “autorite judiciaire” could include the Swedish prosecutor. The two texts having equal validity, Lord Phillips decided to prefer the French language text over the English language text, an absolutely stunning decision as the UK negotiators could be presumed to have been working from the English text, as could UK ministers and parliament when they ratified the decision.

[..] Sweden has not filed a request for arrest. Sweden is going through its judicial processes – which it skipped the first time – in order to decide whether or not to file a request for arrest. This gives Assange the opportunity to start the process of fighting the allegations, which he strenuously denies, in the Swedish courts. However at present his Swedish lawyer cannot access him in Belmarsh high security jail, which is typical of the abuses of process to which he is subject.

[..] Julian Assange revolutionised publishing by bringing the public direct access to massive amounts of raw material showing secrets the government wished to hide. By giving the public this direct access he cut out the filtering and mediating role of the journalistic and political classes. Contrast, for example, the Panama Papers which, contrary to promises, only ever saw less than 2% of the raw material published and where major western companies and individuals were completely protected from revelation because of the use of MSM intermediaries. Or compare Wikileaks to the Snowden files, the vast majority of which have now been buried and will never be revealed, after foolishly being entrusted to the Guardian and the Intercept. Assange cut out the intermediary role of the mediating journalist and, by allowing the people to see the truth about how they are governed, played a major role in undercutting public confidence in the political establishment that exploits them.

“If anything surfaces, I can assure you it would’ve been planted,” he said. “Julian isn’t a novice when it comes to security and securing his information. We expected this to happen and protections have been in place for a very long time.”

On Monday, judicial authorities from Ecuador carried out an inventory of all the belongings and digital devices left behind at the London embassy following his expulsion last month from the diplomatic compound that had been his home the past seven years. It came as Sweden announced it was seeking Assange’s arrest on suspicion of rape, setting up a possible future tug-of-war with the United States over any extradition of Assange from Britain.

It’s not known what devices authorities removed from the embassy or what information they contained. But authorities said they were acting on a request by the U.S. prosecutors, leading Assange’s defenders to claim that Ecuador has undermined the most basic principles of asylum while denying the secret-spiller’s right to prepare his defense. “It’s disgraceful,” WikiLeaks’ editor in chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Ecuador granted him asylum because of the threat of extradition to the U.S. and now the same country, under new leadership, is actively collaborating with a criminal investigation against him.”

[..] Hrafnsson, who has visited the Australian activist in jail, said Assange saw his eviction coming for weeks as relations with President Lenin Moreno’s government deteriorated, so he took great care to scrub computers and hard drives of any compromising material, including future planned leaks or internal communications with WikiLeaks collaborators. Still, Hrafnsson said he fully expects Moreno or the Americans to claim revelations that don’t exist. He called Monday’s proceedings a “horse show” because no legal authority can guarantee Assange’s devices haven’t been tampered with, or the chain of custody unbroken, in the six weeks since his arrest. “If anything surfaces, I can assure you it would’ve been planted,” he said. “Julian isn’t a novice when it comes to security and securing his information. We expected this to happen and protections have been in place for a very long time.”

[..] According to the request for a detention order obtained by The Associated Press, Assange is wanted for “intentionally having carried out an intercourse” with an unnamed woman “by unduly exploiting that she was in a helpless state because of sleep.”

I call Mr. Trump the Golden Golem of Greatness for a reason (several really) but mainly for his seemingly implacable demeanor. He’s exactly like that folkloric figure from the mists beyond the Pale of Settlement, an animate hunk of impassive clay communing with spirits of the dead, blundering blindly about the land, scaring little children and turning the peasants’ blood to ice-water. You might even say he was conjured up by the very deacons of Wokesterism who now tremble at his every thundering footstep.

Uncle Joe Biden is surely the antidote to all that. He served four years under the Wokester Deacon-in-Chief, Mr. Obama, and cheerfully endured his ritual castration, rendering him harmless to all who must-be-believed, and other sub-categories of the aggrieved and oppressed. At 76, he is way older than anyone (anyone serious, that is) who ever ran for President before, perhaps bordering even on feeble, and that’s another plus: he couldn’t hurt a fly. At least not here in the States. He has no plans, apparently, to try to make America great again — but he still has a hearty appetite for international adventuring that might redound to the benefit of the US War industry and its handmaidens on K Street and Capitol Hill.

And, of course, Uncle Joe goes through these palliative motions of bringing tranquility to the Democratic scramble, his smile fixed, teeth gleaming, hair perfect, hand a’pumping, as ever more information emerges about the spectacular effrontery of his international money-grubbing while vice-president. He did what in Ukraine in 2014. And Uncle Joe’s son, Hunter, walked away with how many millions of dollars after being appointed to the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings? Uncle Joe even bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations about how he browbeat Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko into firing their equivalent of Attorney General, who was about to look into this fishy Burisma deal. And then there was the even bigger windful after Uncle Joe paid a call on China and Hunter’s shadowy company, Rosemont Seneca, landed a billion dollar private equity deal (whatever that means) from an equally shadowy company fronting for the Chinese government.

One day in January 2015, Nigel Farage gave his senior adviser, Raheem Kassam, an unusual bit of news. “On Monday, we’re going to Milano,” he said. (Farage always pronounced it “Mil-ar-no”, much to Kassam’s amusement.) “I was like: ‘What? Why?’” Kassam said. Farage, who was then the leader of the anti-European Union party Ukip, explained that they were going to sit down with Gianroberto Casaleggio. Kassam whipped out his phone and quickly Googled “Casaleggio” – he had never heard of him. Farage described Casaleggio to Kassam as the “genius behind Five Star”, the Italian political party that won a 25% vote share in 2013, the first national elections it had ever contested.

Nothing like this had happened before in modern Italian politics. Casaleggio and the comedian Beppe Grillo, who was famous in Italy for his rabble-rousing live shows, had founded the movement just four years earlier. They had largely built the Five Star Movement online, with remarkably little money or mainstream media attention. Five Star was only one step toward Casaleggio’s long-term ambition: to supplant parliament with an online democracy where citizens, highly informed through the internet, could fashion policy directly. Farage had “always been interested” in direct democracy, Kassam said, and in “turning everything over to the internet”. But Farage was more impressed by the fact that, after just a few years, Casaleggio’s largely online movement was on the verge of becoming Italy’s biggest political party.

He wanted to know how Casaleggio had done it – and then to replicate its success. In Milan, Farage was struck by how Casaleggio was using social media and the internet to create a new model for political communications. Five Star members were discussing and voting on policy and nominating and electing each other to run for office while being steeped in party propaganda, all on a single online platform. This made supporters feel as if the movement’s identity was emerging organically from their online interactions, while Casaleggio and Grillo could guide those interactions with messaging from above. What’s more, the “movement” was dominated by a private company owned by Casaleggio.

Five Star was in many ways less like a political party than a publicly traded company in which members were voting shareholders, but Casaleggio had the controlling stake. Farage left Milan “very excited” about bringing Five Star’s style of digital democracy to the UK, Kassam said. So did Farage’s ally Liz Bilney, who was also present at the Milan meeting and went on to found the pro-Brexit group Leave.EU. “If I was starting Ukip today,” Farage told the political scientists Matthew Goodwin and Caitlin Milazzo around that time, “would I spend 20 years speaking to people in village halls or would I base it on the Grillo model? I know exactly what I would do.”

Italian unions have refused to load cargo onto a Saudi ship carrying weapons, in protest against Riyadh’s war on Yemen. The dock workers have gone on strike, refusing to work until the ship leaves port in Genoa. While the Saudi Arabian ship, the Bahri-Yanbu, was expected to leave for Jeddah by the end end of the day, it seems the delivery might end up being rather late. After unsuccessful attempts to have the ship barred from docking in Italy altogether, it was greeted by banners and a protests as it arrived in port Monday. Workers were joined by human rights campaigners who oppose stocking the ship over fears the supplies will be used against the civilian population in Yemen.

The demonstrators held signs opposing the war and arms trafficking. “We will not be complicit in what is happening in Yemen,” union leaders said in a statement. Port officials have acknowledged that the generators that protesters fear may be used for military purposes have been blocked from being brought on board, but say some non-critical goods will still be loaded. Union leaders are scheduled to meet with the port’s prefects to discuss the impasse. The ship was loaded with weapons in Belgium, but successfully blocked from picking up additional arms at a French port as a result of a similar protest.

There’s fresh hope that unrest in Donbass raging since 2014 could find resolution as Ukraine’s new president, comedian and presidential impersonator turned overnight real political leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was just sworn in on Monday, and immediately he is dissolving parliament and urging peaceful settlement in the country’s east. The 41-year old Zelenskiy said in translated comments via The Moscow Times: “Our first task is to end the conflict in the Donbass.” With a clear mandate from Ukrainian voters who overwhelmingly want to see an easing of tensions with Russia, and the exit of oligarchs from power to halt mass political corruption, he announced during the inauguration ceremony from Kiev he wants to achieve a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, even if it means losing his post.

In his much anticipated inauguration speech, Zelenskiy switched from Ukrainian to Russian to say: “I believe that the first step to begin this dialogue will be the return of all Ukrainian prisoners [held by Russia].” He further emphasized he would pursue peace at a cost to his reputation — “and, if need be, even this job” — according to The Moscow Times. Zelenkiy’s upset victory over Petro Poroshenko by a double-digit margin has led some to dub him the “Donald Trump of Ukrainian politics” given his outside the system status and willingness to break from the establishment on the question of dialogue with Russia. He promised Ukrainians that he would seek to do this “without losing our territory, never.”

The five-year long conflict in the east involving Russian-backed separatists who’ve severed ties from Kiev in a move for de facto independence has killed an estimated 13,000 people and has at times threatened to escalate to the level of western intervention. The billionaire chocolate magnate Poroshenko, who came to power as a result of the West-backed so-called Euromaidan revolution gave one parting shot during his concession speech: in the Kremlin, he said, “they believe that with a new inexperienced Ukrainian president, Ukraine could be quickly returned to Russia’s orbit of influence,” according to a translation by the LA Times.

Finally, 130 years after it was established, the kilogram as we know it is about to be retired. But it’s not the end: tomorrow, 20 May 2019, a new definition will be put in place – one that’s far more accurate than anything we’ve had until now. After the shift was unanimously voted in at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles at the end of last year, the change is now finally about to become official. Le kilogramme est mort, vive le kilogramme. Most people don’t think about metrology – the science of measurement – as we go about our day. But it’s vastly important. It’s not just the system by which we measure the world; it’s also the system by which scientists conduct their observations. It needs to be precise, and it needs to be constant, preferably based on the laws of our Universe as we know it.

But of the seven base units of the International System of Units (SI), four are not currently based on the constants of physics: the ampere (current), kelvin (temperature), mole (amount of substance) and kilogram (mass). “The idea,” explained Emeritus Director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) Terry Quinn to ScienceAlert, “is that by having all the units based on the constants of physics, they are by definition stable and unaltering in the future, and universally accessible everywhere.” For example, a metre is determined by the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second. A second is determined by the time it takes for a caesium atom to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times.

A kilogram is defined by… a kilogram. No, literally. It’s a kilogram weight called the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK), made in 1889 from 90 percent platinum and 10 percent iridium, and kept in a special vault in the BIPM headquarters. [..] For the last few years, metrologists have been talking about the need for a new standard. Now, they’re finally ready to redefine the kilogram based on the Planck constant, the ratio of energy to frequency of a photon, measured to its most precise value yet only last year. “It is only now that we can define the kilogram in terms of a constant of physics – the Planck constant, the speed of light and the resonant frequency of the caesium atom,” Quinn explained.

While long-expected, amid two chaos-ridden years as the Justice Department’s No.2, the day has finally come when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has reportedly sent his resignation letter to President Donald Trump, will leave post May 11. “I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education and prosperity,” Mr. Rosenstein wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In his letter, Mr. Rosenstein cited the Justice Department’s progress in executing the Trump administration’s agenda: fighting violent crime, combating the nation’s drug abuse crisis, toughening immigration enforcement and supporting local law enforcement. “Productivity rose, and crime fell,” he wrote.

“Our nation is safer, our elections are more secure and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyberattacks,” he wrote. “We also pursued illegal leaks, investigated credible allegations of employee misconduct and accommodated congressional oversight without compromising law enforcement interests.” Mr. Rosenstein made no mention of the special counsel in his resignation letter, but instead, as WSJ reports, wrote of the Justice Department’s responsibility to avoid partisanship. “Political considerations may influence policy choices, but neutral principals must drive decisions about individual cases,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block congressional subpoenas for his business records, claiming House Democrats are simply attempting to harass him. Politico reported that in a joint statement, Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the Trump suit “meritless.” They claimed Trump’s suit was a tactic to delay accountability. Waters is the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee and Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff said at the time that the subpoenas were part of an investigation “into allegations of potential foreign influence on the U.S. political process.”

Two House committees subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and several other financial institutions earlier this month as part of investigations into Trump’s finances. The lawsuit by Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and his daughter Ivanka, was filed in Manhattan federal court. The Trump Organization and the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust are among the other plaintiffs. The Trumps want a federal judge to declare the subpoenas unlawful and unenforceable. The lawsuit also seeks to block the financial institutions from disclosing information and complying with the subpoenas. [..] “This case involves congressional subpoenas that have no legitimate or lawful purpose,” the suit, obtained by The New York Times, said.

“The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage. No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one.”

AFP headline was: “US military spending up for first time in 7 years”. But that’s not the story. It’s Russia. Even France spends more. And stories keep on coming about Russia threatening just about everyone.

US military spending has risen for the first time in seven years, reflecting Trump administration policy, according to a new report released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Worldwide military spending also rose by 2.6 percent to $1.8 trillion overall last year, SIPRI calculated. It was the second year running the global figure has risen, bringing military spending to its highest level since 1988. “The increase in US spending was driven by the implementation from 2017 of new arms procurement programmes under the Trump administration,” said Aude Fleurant, director of SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) programme.

The US figure alone of $649 billion was as much as the next eight highest military budgets. But Chinese as well as US spending helped push the overall spending figures for the year higher, said the report. China’s spending has risen 83 percent since 2009, bringing it up to second place, ahead of Saudi Arabia, India — which is modernising its armed forces — and France. [..] Russia meanwhile dropped out of the top five spenders, with its military budget declining since 2016, said the report. Western countries’ economic sanctions against Russia, in place since 2014 because of its conflict with Ukraine, have hit the country’s military budget.

By the end of 2019, fighting in Yemen will have claimed about 102,000 lives, according to new figures from the United Nations that indicate the war has killed far more people than previously reported. A UN-commissioned report by University of Denver also revealed that more Yemenis were dying of hunger, disease and the lack of health clinics and other infrastructure than from fighting. About 131,000 Yemenis will have died from these side effects of the conflict between the beginning in 2015 and the end of 2019, according to the 68-page study, called Assessing the Impact of War on Development in Yemen. The combined death toll from fighting and disease is 233,000, or 0.8 percent of Yemen’s 30 million-strong population.

Researchers also said that those five years of conflict will have cost Yemen’s economy $89bn. “It’s worse than people expected,” Jonathan Moyer, an assistant professor and lead author on the report, told Middle East Eye. “It’s one of the highest-impact internal conflicts since the end of the Cold War. On par with Iraq, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo – conflicts with an impact on development that lasts for a generation.” According to Moyer, the vast majority of the victims of Yemen’s conflict are children under five. The report says that one child dies from the war and its side effects every 11 minutes and 54 seconds. Moyer’s team also projected forward, calculating Yemen’s losses if the war were to drag on until 2030. If fighting continues until then, the death toll would reach 1.8 million, the economy would have lost $657bn, 84 percent of Yemenis would be malnourished and 71 percent of them would live in extreme poverty, researchers said.

Dear Mr. Muilenburg: On April 4, 2019 you somewhat belatedly released a statement that “We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents. These tragedies continue to weigh heavily on our hearts and minds….” You added that a preliminary investigation made it “apparent that in both flights” the MCAS “activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information.” These and other remarks reflect years of mismanagement by Boeing executives, now tragically bearing bitter fruit. Your acknowledgement of the problems with the 737 MAX somehow escaped inclusion in your messages to shareholders, the capital markets and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is now stunningly clear that your overly optimistic outlook on January 20, 2019 – after the Indonesian Lion Air crash – was misleading. Whatever the public learns, day after day about the troubles of your company, it is still far less than what Boeing knows will come out day by day, and not just about the deadly design of the 737 MAX. Your narrow-body passenger aircraft – namely, the long series of 737’s that began in the nineteen sixties was past its prime. How long could Boeing avoid making the investment needed to produce a “clean-sheet” aircraft and, instead, in the words of Bloomberg Businessweek “push an aging design beyond its limits?” Answer: As long as Boeing could get away with it and keep necessary pilot training and other costs low for the airlines as a sales incentive.

Boeing kept on this track until the competition from its only competitor, Airbus, came along with its A320neo. The year 2011 was a crucial period for the company. Top management was into preliminary work on a new aircraft and then panicked over Airbus’s success. To compete with Airbus, Boeing equipped the 737 MAX with larger engines tilted more forward and upward on the wings than prior 737’s. Thus began the trail of criminal negligence that will implicate the company and its executives.

Southwest Airlines, the largest Boeing 737 MAX customer, says Boeing told them a standard flight angle alert system had to be bought separately to be activated, contradicting the manual – and only after the deadly Lion Air crash. The system in question, officially known as the angle of attack (AOA) disagree light, is basically an indicator at a plane’s control board. The light is expected to go on whenever the aircraft’s nose pitches up or down too far, warning its pilots of a potentially dangerous situation. Such a light was a standard issue on earlier models of Boeing planes, and was expected to work in the same manner on the ill-fated MAX 737 planes – except it wasn’t – instead coming as part of an additional indicator package.

When the new planes were delivered to Southwest Airlines, the “lights were depicted to us by Boeing as operable on all MAX aircraft” regardless of purchasing the add-on, the airline operator said in a statement. The manual for the aircraft showed that as well, the company said. After the first deadly crash of a 737 MAX plane in October, operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air, Boeing notified Southwest that the indicators were actually not working by default. The company then promptly installed the optional package that made the warning lights function as the Southwest pilots had expected. Boeing, in a statement to CNBC, said the disagree lights would in the future be included as a standard feature – that is if the grounded jet returns to operations.

The boss of Boeing has denied accusations that its two 737 Max aircraft involved in fatal crashes lacked an optional safety feature, which might have alerted the pilots to technical malfunctions that partly caused the accidents. “We don’t make safety features optional,” Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chairman and chief executive, said at the company’s annual meeting in Chicago on Monday. “Every one of our airplanes includes all of the safety features necessary for safe flight.” A preliminary investigation into the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crash last month found it was triggered by a faulty “angle of attack” sensor, which monitors the inflight position of the plane.

The erroneous readings from the sensor in turn activated the aircraft’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), an auto-pilot program that encourages the plane’s nose to dip down. [..] It was revealed over the weekend that Boeing had removed warnings about pitch sensor malfunction from the standard 737 Max (MCAS) safety package. The Wall Street Journal reported that the warning system, which was present in previous 737 models, was only operative on 737 Max jets if the operator airlines had paid for a package of additional safety features. “In this case again, as in most accidents, there are a chain of events that occurred. It is not correct to attribute that to any single item,” Muilenburg said.

“We know that there are some improvements that we can make to MCAS and we will make those improvements.” He told shareholders that software updates being carried out would make the grounded 737 Max fleet “one of the safest airplanes ever to fly”, adding: “Yet, we know we can always be better. We have a responsibility to design, build and support the safest airplanes in the sky. The recent accidents have only intensified our dedication to it.” [..] It was also revealed on Monday that four Boeing employees had called the Federal Aviation Administration to raise serious concerns about the 737 Max. The calls began coming in within hours of Ethiopian investigators releasing a preliminary report on the crash.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Ecuador, accusing the diplomatic staff at the London embassy of spying on the whistleblower before leaking illegally obtained data to a third party for extortion. Lenin Moreno’s government violated Assange’s privacy by secretly recording the journalist’s daily activities starting from March 2018, said a complaint submitted Monday to the attorney general’s office in Ecuador on behalf of the whistleblower. It says the spying was conducted with the help of Promsecurity, a private contractor firm which administers electronic surveillance at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Naming three officials of the diplomatic mission, including Ambassador Jaime Marchán, as well as four members of Promsecurity, the complaint alleges that the government violated at least four counts of domestic law by illicitly monitoring Assange’s activity. Those involved apparently tried to extort €3 million from WikiLeaks threatening to publish audio, video and personal documents of Assange unless they get paid. Ecuadorian law provides penalties of up to five years in prison for each violation mentioned in the complaint. The matter is “very sensitive and complicated” Ecuadorian lawyer Carlos Poveda told reporters after filing the case in Quito, asking for the judiciary to investigate the case. The lawyer did not reveal to whom the Australian’s personal information had been leaked to, but noted that that the Spanish authorities are already investigating the extortion scheme.

Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when she returned to Russia. She was not employed by the Russian government nor was she a lobbyist on Putin’s behalf. In fact the Putin Administration is hostile to Russian gun rights groups. Nevertheless the US mainstream media and Trump’s Justice Department are treating her as public enemy number one in a case that will no doubt set the dangerous precedent of criminalizing person-to-person diplomacy in the United States.

The Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) was passed in 1938 under pressure from the FDR Administration partly to silence opposition to the US entry into World War II. While a handful of cases were prosecuted during the war, between 1966 and 2015 the Justice Department only brought seven FARA cases for prosecution. Though very few cases have been brought on FARA violations, one of them was against Samir Vincent, who was paid millions of dollars by Saddam Hussein to lobby for sanctions relief without registering. He got off with a fine and “community service.” Millions of dollars in unregistered payments from Saddam Hussein gets no jail time, while Butina gets 18 months in prison for privately promoting a cause most Americans support! How is this justice?

The US Justice Department is not even as tough on illegals who commit capital crimes in the US! Unfortunately Maria Butina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the rise of the “Russiagate” hysteria, Butina’s case was seen as a useful tool by Democrats to push the idea that President Trump was put into office by the Russians. Plus, many of them are also hostile to our Second Amendment and to the National Rifle Association. So it was a perfect storm for Butina.

The sense of gathering crisis persists. It is systemic and existential. It calls into question our ability to carry on “normal” life much farther into this century, and all the anxiety that attends it is so hard for the public to process that a dismaying number of citizens opt for suicide. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. Bad ideas flourish in this nutrient medium of unresolved crisis. Lately, they dominate the scene on every side. A species of wishful thinking that resembles a primitive cargo cult grips the technocratic class, awaiting magical rescue remedies to extend the regime of Happy Motoring, consumerism, and suburbia that make up the crumbling armature of “normal” life in the USA.

The political Right seeks to Make America Great Again, as though we might return to a 1962 heyday of industrial mass production by wishing hard enough. The Left seeks the equivalent of an extended childhood for all, lived out in a universal safe space, where all goods and services come magically free from a kindly parent-like government, and the sunny days are spent training unicorns to find rainbows. The decade-long “recovery” from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 amounted to ten years of fake-it-til-you-make-it — with the prospect nil of actually making it to something like economic and cultural soundness. Are we too far gone now? Some kind of shock therapy is surely in the offing, and probably in the form of a violent financial readjustment that will alter the terms of getting and spending so drastically as to topple the matrix of rackets that masquerades as the nation’s business.

In the sharp light of spring it is clear that Macron’s winter strategy: the Great National Debate, has achieved nothing for the government and more tellingly perhaps, has further revealed Macron’s own incapacity to either change himself or shift course. As one anonymous French state official reportedly said: ‘Mitterrand gave them an extra week’s holiday, but Macron can’t manage anything’. He simply seems unable in any form to communicate with either the Gilets or the people of France. His constant speeches, with their casual insults and lack of empathy, remain one of the best recruitment tools the Gilets possess. His recent pronouncements continue this trend.

His promise to rebuild the cathedral in five years was met with scorn – ‘this is not a railway line’, said one commentator, while his invitation to the world (a typical empty gesture) angered and aroused traditionalists. Indeed, as has been widely reported, his endorsement of cash donations from billionaires, simply provided the Gilets with yet more free sticks to beat him and the state. Even his big showpiece speech was cancelled when the Cathedral burst into flames. And what was his big announcement? A freeze on hospital and school closures, the index-linking of pensions to inflation and the closing of the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the university that produces the country’s political and civil elite, all of which, particularly the last, were seen as too late and totally irrelevant.

After all it doesn’t put food on the table or help the people get to the end of the month with any money. As I noted in previous articles, this is typical of Macron, revealing only how his personal authority is slipping away, and strangely enough, how irrelevant he is becoming to the entire debate.

Globalization is waning, and a U.S.-China trade deal would do nothing to reverse that phenomenon, according to a global investment strategist. Peak globalization has actually already come and gone, according to David Roche, president and global strategist at London-based Independent Strategy. “The actual reversal of globalization started over seven years ago,” well before the rise of U.S. President Donald Trump, as countries worldwide instituted more protectionist policies, Roche told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week. In fact, even China — whose leaders are now some of the loudest proponents of global systems — will see most of its future growth come from domestic pursuits, he projected.

“Globalization is on a back foot, it’s not the trade deal with China, a trade deal agreement which would flip the switch and turn on the motor again — the damage has been done,” he added. “There is no way going forward that China is able to grow by using international trade. It is going to grow more domestically.” In fact, China is not the only country looking inward. For many years, Roche noted, countries like Italy have had populist governments adopting nationalist policies, prioritizing the short-term benefit of their citizens instead of embracing globalization and the interconnectivity it entails.

Climate change can’t be halted if we carry on degrading the soil, a report will say. There’s three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere – but that carbon’s being released by deforestation and poor farming. This is fuelling climate change – and compromising our attempts to feed a growing world population, the authors will say. Problems include soils being eroded, compacted by machinery, built over, or harmed by over-watering. Hurting the soil affects the climate in two ways: it compromises the growth of plants taking in carbon from the atmosphere, and it releases soil carbon previously stored by worms taking leaf matter underground.

The warning will come from the awkwardly-named IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – a panel studying the benefits of nature to humans. The body, which is meeting this week, aims to get all the world’s governments singing from the same sheet about the need to protect natural systems. IPBES will formally release its report on Monday 6 May. About 3.2 billion people worldwide are suffering from degraded soils, said IPBES chairman Prof Sir Bob Watson. “That’s almost half of the world population. There’s no question we are degrading soils all over the world. We are losing from the soil the organic carbon and this undermines agricultural productivity and contributes to climate change. We absolutely have to restore the degraded soil we’ve got.”

Protests against climate change should be extended to the other greatest threat facing humanity, according to England’s chief medical officer, who says an Extinction Rebellion-style campaign is needed to save people from antibiotics becoming ineffective in the face of overuse and a lack of regulation. The threat of antibiotic resistance is as great as that from climate change, said Dame Sally Davies, and should be given as much attention from politicians and the public. “It would be nice if activists recognised the importance of this,” she said. “This is happening slowly and people adjust to where we are, but this is the equivalent [danger] to extreme weather.”

Davies said efforts to combat the problem of common illnesses becoming untreatable by antibiotic medicines should be coordinated at a worldwide level in a similar way as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of scientists set up in 1988 to tackle global warming. The IPCC warned last year that climate change would lead to disaster within 12 years if urgent action was not taken to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Davies said the consequences of antibiotic resistance posed at least as great a threat to humanity’s future, and in the same timescale, but few efforts had been made to deal with the issue. “There is not the appetite [among pharmaceutical companies] to develop new medicines,” she said. “There is a systemic failure. We need something similar to the IPCC.”

She listed a series of problems that the world has allowed to build up, from overuse of antibiotics and a lack of restraints on prescribing strong medications, to the rampant use of the drugs on animals, including by farmers for “growth promotion”, as the drugs can make animals put on weight faster. Such use has been banned in Europe and the US, but is common elsewhere, and even in the EU and US, the use of strong antibiotics critical to human health is still allowed on animals despite scientific advice to the contrary.

World stocks hit a four-month high on Wednesday on hopes of progress in trade talks between the United States and China, with a dovish backdrop at major central banks also helping push markets back into the black. U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations with China were going well and suggested he was open to extending the deadline to complete them beyond March 1. Up to now, it was assumed U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports would rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if no trade deal was reached by then. Asian shares soared on Trump’s comment, and European stock indices also strengthened, pushing the MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, to a four-month high.

Deutsche Bank’s chief strategist Jim Reid said the newsflow was encouraging, despite signs that more progress was needed. “The overall feeling is that it is one step forward, three-quarters of a step back at the moment. So positive momentum but still fragile,” he said in a note. While hopes for a trade deal between the world’s two largest economy are seen as the primary driver for world stocks, dovish central bank messages are also playing a part. New York Fed President John Williams on Tuesday said he was comfortable with the level U.S. interest rates were at and that he saw no need to raise them again unless economic growth or inflation shifted to an unexpectedly higher gear.

Oil prices slipped away from 2019 highs on Wednesday, with surging U.S. supply and slowing economic growth tempering upward pressure from supply cuts led by producer club OPEC and from Washington’s sanctions on Iran and Venezuela. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures hit 2019 highs of $56.39 per barrel on Wednesday but had slipped back to $56.16 per barrel by 0746 GMT, which was slightly above their last settlement. International Brent crude futures were at $66.41 per barrel, down 4 cents from their last close, though still not far off their 2019 high of $66.83 per barrel, hit on Monday. Oil prices have been supported by supply cuts led by OPEC.

OPEC-member and top crude exporter Saudi Arabia is expected to reduce shipments of light crude oil to Asia in March as part of the effort to tighten markets. OPEC as well as some non-affiliated producers such as Russia agreed late last year to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to prevent a large supply overhang from swelling. “We have lowered Saudi crude oil output in line with announcements…(and) are now assuming that Saudi Arabia will produce in the first three quarters of 2019 less than the 10.31 million bpd target it agreed to at the Dec. 7 OPEC, non-OPEC meeting,” French bank BNP Paribas said in a note.

Theresa May will present the EU with new legal proposals to solve the Irish backstop issue on Wednesday, which Downing Street hopes will be enough to convince Eurosceptics to back her Brexit deal. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, confirmed late on Tuesday that the government no longer intended to pursue alternative arrangements for the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which had been championed by cross-factional MPs including Eurosceptic Steve Baker and soft Brexiter Nicky Morgan. Instead, the prime minister is travelling to Brussels to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, with a plan to secure legal assurances that the backstop would not permanently bind the UK into a customs union.

She was forced to admit to Conservative MPs who met her on Tuesday night that the Irish backstop could not be replaced by the “Malthouse compromise” – proposals for a free trade agreement with as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border. However, she stressed that this solution would still be examined in future to help solve the issue of customs arrangements at the Irish border. Hammond confirmed that the Malthouse compromise was no longer a viable option in a speech to the Make UK dinner held by the manufacturers’ association EEF on Tuesday night. He called the plan a “valuable effort” that should be looked at again during the transition period, but said it could not provide a solution now.

“It is clear that the EU will not consider replacing the backstop with such an alternative arrangement now, in order to address our immediate challenge,” he said, adding that the alternative arrangement would “require significant changes to EU legislation and customs practices that would need to be negotiated with the EU member states and others”.

Britain faces the “catastrophic prospect” of a no-deal Brexit next month due to the selfishness of some politicians and chaotic parliamentary proceedings, the head of the country’s main manufacturing association said on Tuesday. The strong warning from Make UK, previously known as the EEF, comes as Japanese carmaker Honda is expected to say it is preparing to shut its main UK plant with a loss of 3,500 jobs. Nissan earlier this month canceled plans to build its X-Trail sport utility vehicle in Britain, mostly blaming “business reasons” but also citing Brexit uncertainty. “Let me be clear … for those hard Brexiteers who accuse us of scaremongering. This is very real and very serious,”

Make UK’s chair, Judith Hackitt, said in remarks ahead of the group’s annual conference. Finance minister Philip Hammond and business minister Greg Clark – who are on the pro-European wing of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party – as well as opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, are due to address the conference. Corbyn intends to call again for May to back his proposal for a permanent customs union with the European Union and full guarantees for existing worker and consumer rights. He plans to meet chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier this week. [..] Some 49 percent of 429 manufacturers surveyed for Make UK said a no-deal Brexit would make Britain unattractive, compared with 28 percent who said Britain would still be an attractive location, with bigger companies more likely to express concerns.

It’s remarkable how arms manufacturers never have to face any ethics claims, anywhere in the world. No government that says: are you crazy? And sure they make a few billion here and there, but their influence far outweighs their economic value.

A Khaleeji bagpipe band, a colourful aircraft display, a performance by the Armenian Military Orchestra and a big show of support from the Emirate royal families. These were some of the touches at Sunday’s opening ceremony for the International Defence Exhibition and Conference (Idex 2019) in Abu Dhabi, the Middle East’s biggest arms fair. It’s a decadent and distasteful celebration of militarism and weaponry. Missiles, rifles, tanks, helicopters and warships are on display for anyone that can afford them. More than 100,000 people will attend this week, including representatives from all of the world’s biggest arms companies and military delegates from 57 nations.

Among those looking to do business is the UK government, which has sent a team of civil servants to support UK arms company reps in doing as much business as possible. Particularly with the uncertainty of Brexit on the horizon, they will pull out all stops to cement sales. There is no way of knowing what kind of deals will be discussed, or the kind of weaponry that might be sold as a result. We don’t know how these weapons will be used, or who they will be used against. But the results could be devastating. There is no shortage of UK arms in the Middle East. With rising military budgets, it is an important region for the arms trade. In 2017 it accounted for more than two-thirds of all UK arms sales.

It’s been eight years since the Arab spring uprisings. UK-made weapons were implicated in the violence, particularly in Libya where UK contractors were upgrading Gaddafi’s tanks on the eve of the uprising, and Egypt where UK-made teargas was turned on protesters. No lessons were learned, and there has been a significant increase in arms sales to many of the regimes. Since the uprisings began, and, despite the atrocities that have taken place, the UK has licensed a further £200m worth of arms to Egypt, and £100m worth to Bahrain. The sales include rifles, ammunition, armoured vehicles and a host of other deadly weaponry.

The impact of UK arms sales is most strongly felt in Yemen, where UK-made fighter jets and bombs are playing a central role in the ongoing war. For almost four years now the Saudi Arabian-led coalition has used them to inflict the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than 60,000 people have been killed, and yet the arms sales continue unabated. Last week a House of Lords committee chaired by a former Conservative cabinet member told the government that these arms sales are illegal.

After an investigation conducted by the Covington Diocese turned up no evidence that 16-year-old high school student Nicholas Sandmann confronted Native American activist Nathan Phillips during a March for Life rally at the Lincoln Memorial last month, seemingly confirming that the mainstream press was incorrect to pillory the white, MAGA-hat wearing teen for a confrontation that never actually happened, lawyers for Sandmann filed the first of what are expected to be many defamation lawsuits demanding compensatory and punitive damages for leading an Internet mob that villified Sandmann and his peers. According to Reuters, lawyers Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry are seeking $250 million in damages from the Washington Post on behalf of Sandmann, a sum equal to the amount that billionaire Jeff Bezos paid to buy the paper in 2013.

The suit claims that the paper – which helped publicize a now infamous photo that helped trigger an Internet mob that swiftly outed the teen and demanded he be punished – led the hate campaign against Sandmann – and failed to practice proper journalistic due diligence – “because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip to the January 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C. when he was unexpectedly and suddenly confronted by Nathan Phillips (‘Phillips’), a known Native American activist, who beat a drum and sang loudly within inches of his face (‘the January 18 incident’).” Not only did the diocese’s investigation corroborate the students’ version of events, but it also found no evidence to support Phillips’ claims that Sandmann and his fellow students had been chanting “build the wall” at the time of the confrontation.

What really happened – as is now widely known – is that the students, who were marching with the pro-life rally, were verbally accosted by the Black Hebrew Israelites, who hurled homophobic slurs at the students and accosted them. “In targeting and bullying Nicholas by falsely accusing him of instigating the January 18 incident, the Post conveyed that Nicholas engaged in acts of racism by “swarming” Phillips, “blocking” his exit away from the students, and otherwise engaging in racist misconduct,” the suit read. “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump (“the President”) by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.” The Washington Post’s Vice President for Communications Kristine Coratti Kelly told Reuters “We are reviewing a copy of the lawsuit and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.”

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s efforts to undermine the EU status quo by rallying a broad coalition of eurosceptic groups during spring elections for the European Parliament are set to pay off big time, according to the first forecast of the expected results released by the chamber on Tuesday. According to the polling, which was cited by the FT, Salvini’s League Party is expected to make some of the most striking gains in the May vote, possibly becoming the second-largest party in the assembly after Germany’s center right Christian Democratic Union.

Mr Salvini’s League is on course to dominate in Italy by winning 32 per cent of the vote and 27 seats, according to the poll. If so, it would be the second-biggest party in the chamber after Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, which is forecast to hold 29 seats, down from 34 in the last election in 2014. The CDU is a mainstay of the European People’s party, the parliament’s main centre-right group. The EPP is predicted to slip from 217 seats to 183 seats, while the centre-left Social Democrat grouping is projected to lose almost one-third of its seats — from 186 to 135.

In total, Eurosceptic parties are expected to win 153 seats in the chamber. Though they control the same number now, their share of the votes will climb as the total number of seats in the chamber falls to 705 from 751 to account for the UK’s departure. In addition to Salvini’s League, the Eurosceptic faction in the EUP includes Poland’s Law and Justice party, Italy’s Five Star Movement and France’s Rassemblement National. Law and Justice and France’s RN have pledged to join forces in the coming parliament. Other Eurosceptic parties including Spain’s far-right Vox and the Dutch Forum for Democracy are expected to win seats in the chamber for the first time.

Thousands of people rallied across France after a surge of anti-Semitic attacks in recent weeks that culminated on Tuesday with vandals daubing swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans on dozens of graves in a Jewish cemetery. Political leaders from all parties, including former Presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, gathered in Paris filling the Place de la Republique, a symbol of the nation, to decry anti-Semitic acts with one common slogan: “Enough!” People also lined the streets of cities from Lille in the north to Toulouse and Marseille in the south. President Emmanuel Macron paid respects at one of the 96 desecrated graves in the village of Quatzenheim, near the eastern city of Strasbourg.

“Whoever did this is not worthy of the French republic and will be punished… We’ll take action, we’ll apply the law and we’ll punish them,” he said, walking through a gate scarred with a swastika as he entered the graveyard. Macron later visited the national Holocaust memorial in Paris with the heads of the Senate and National Assembly. France is home to the biggest Jewish community in Europe — around 550,000 — a population that has grown by about half since World War Two, but anti-Semitic attacks remain common. Government statistics released last week showed there were more than 500 anti-Semitic attacks in the country last year, a 74 percent increase from 2017. “Some people are provoking the authority of the state. It needs to be dealt with now and extremely firmly,” Sarkozy told reporters. “It’s a real question of authority. Violence is spreading and it needs to stop now.”

Cuba denied on Tuesday it has security forces in Venezuela and charged the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign of lies paving the way for military intervention in the South American country. U.S. President Donald Trump and members of the administration have charged that Cuba’s security forces and military control Venezuela’s and that troops are also on the ground there. “Our government categorically and energetically rejects this slander,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said at a Havana press conference, adding all of the some 20,000 Cubans in Venezuela were civilians, most health professionals. Rodriguez called on the U.S. administration to produce proof.

“There is a big political and communications campaign underway which are usually the prelude to larger actions by this government,” Rodriguez said. Communist-run Cuba has been a key backer of the Venezuelan government since the Bolivarian Revolution that began under former leader Hugo Chavez in 1998. The Trump administration has been trying to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down and hand over power to Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly. [..] Rodriguez termed the political crisis in Venezuela “a failed imperialist coup … fabricated in Washington,” and warned plans to deliver humanitarian aid were a recipe for violence and intervention.

The western press of course can’t report on Putin without trying to make him look weakened. This time there’s a survey that has his approval rating at 64%, “his lowest in 5 years”. From the same “independent” pollsters comes an October poll that says only 40% would have voted for Putin. While he was re-elected 6 months earlier with 76%.

President Vladimir Putin promised Russians rapid improvements in their living conditions as he delivered his annual state of the nation address Wednesday under pressure from falling approval ratings. Putin, who was elected to a fourth term last year with more than 76 percent of the vote, laid out a series of new measures in his speech to Russia’s two houses of parliament. His promises seemed aimed at addressing growing discontent over the dismal living conditions, especially outside Moscow, that many Russians still face nearly 20 years after Putin came to power. “We cannot wait, the situation must change for the better now,” Putin told assembled lawmakers from the lower house State Duma and upper house Federation Council.

“Within this year (Russians) should feel changes,” he said, promising a wide range of steps including new child benefits and lower taxes for larger families. “We did and will do everything for the strengthening of family values,” he said. “The incomes of Russian families should of course rise”. Putin, 66, appeared calm and confident as usual during the speech, but the Kremlin is reportedly deeply concerned by the fall in his personal approval ratings in recent months. A survey by Russia’s independent Levada Center released in January found his approval rating at 64 percent — a figure many Western leaders could only dream of, but Putin’s lowest in five years.

Russians appear increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of economic growth and the concentration of the country’s wealth in a few hands in Moscow. Moves by the government to implement economic reforms, including an increase in the retirement age and a rise in the value-added tax from January 1, have prompted widespread opposition including rare street protests. Another Levada poll in October found only 40 percent of Russians would vote for Putin if an election were held.

In the last few weeks, we have witnessed two pillars of the Russiagate narrative continue to disintegrate and erode. First, we heard that a bipartisan inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted that they have yet to find evidence indicating that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential election. Secondly, new light was shed on the process by which the DNC Emails published by WikiLeaks may have been sourced, thanks to two reports: one authored by former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney and former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, with the other work penned by Disobedient Media’s Adam Carter. Of course, this does not entail that the establishment-backed media will stop promoting the neo-McCarthyist insanity that has held legacy press audiences captive for the last two and a half years.

A recent report from NBC related an admission from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicating that they have discovered no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to date. NBC’s report reads in part: “The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the 2016 election has uncovered no direct evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia, Democrats and Republicans on the committee told NBC News. But different parties’ investigators in the probe, which is winding down, disagree over the implications of a pattern of contacts between Trump associates and Russians.” Let’s review that again: the only thing the Democrats and Republicans disagree on is the significance of an alleged “Pattern of contacts between Trump associates and Russians.”

[..] Last month, The Nation’s Aaron Mate wrote: “Not a single Trump official has been accused of colluding with the Russian government or even of committing any crimes during the 2016 campaign. As The New York Times recently noted, “no public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump’s] campaign conspired with Russia.”

On February 13, BBC Syria’s producer Riam Dalati came out with a statement that “After almost 6 months of investigations” he “can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged” and “no fatalities had occurred in the hospital.” Dalati added that he believes that “the attack did happen” but no Sarin was used and “everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.” [..] Dalati’s statement widely circulated independent media organizations and was even commented by the Russian defense and foreign ministries. Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the revelation as a “theater of absurd.”

“Over the past years, and not only in Syria, we have seen just a tragic farce performed by the Western community and mass media, which on the one hand, speak about the high democratic goals and how they care about the civilians of a sovereign state, and on the other hand, they just do not give a damn about all laws, the international law, freedoms and rights of a nation and certain people,” Zakharova stressed. She compared this case with the situation developing around Iraq prior to the start of the US intervention and recalled how then US ambassador to the UN Colin Powell was convincing the international community that there is a need to rescue “Iraq, Iraqi nation and democracy”.

The Russian Defense Ministry also commented on the issue by saying that Russia is not surprised by the appearance of new discrediting details. “Many of today’s top-ranking politicians in the United States and Europe, then tearing their throats in ‘defending the peaceful Syrians from the terrible chemical attacks of the regime” and sanctioning missile and air strikes on Syria, will try to forget the topic in order to avoid moral, political and criminal liability,” defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.

Europe would still be able to feed its growing population even if it switched entirely to environmentally friendly approaches such as organic farming, according to a scientific paper. A week after research revealed a steep decline in global insect populations that has been linked to the use of pesticides, the study from European thinktank IDDRI claims such chemicals can be phased out and greenhouse gas emissions radically reduced in Europe through agroecological farming, while still producing enough nutritious food for an increasing population. Agroecology takes into account natural ecosystems and uses local knowledge to plant crops that increase the sustainability of the farming system as a whole.

The IDDRI study, entitled Ten Years for Agroecology, used modelling to examine the reduction in yields that would result from a transition to such an approach. Reductions, the authors argue, could be mitigated by eliminating food-feed competition – reorienting diets towards plant-based proteins and pasture-fed livestock, and away from grain-fed white meat. More than half the EU’s cereals and oilseed crops are fed to animals. The study models a future in which European meat production has been cut by 40%, with the greatest reductions in grain-fed pork and poultry. “Pesticide-hungry intensive production is not the only way to feed a growing population” said Rob Percival, the head of food policy at the Soil Association.

“The Ten Years for Agroecology study shows that agroecological and organic farming can feed Europe a healthy diet, while responding to climate change, phasing out pesticides, and maintaining vital biodiversity.” [..] The study is being published in parallel with the UK launch of the Eat-Lancet “planetary health diet”, which proposes a shift towards a more plant-based diet. The agroecology study addresses similar concerns, but places greater emphasis on farmland biodiversity.

Simple and direct swindle. I’ll guarantee your debt if you guarantee mine, it doesn’t matter if we’re both broke. Beijing has known about this for years, but like with the shadow banks, decided to let it flourish because that meets its goals. Both are examples of how China can ‘grow’ its debt, without this showing up in its books. Don’t let the PBOC do it, people can see that.

[..] the province of Shandong has emerged as the potential epicenter for the next debt crisis: here, at least 20 private firms provide guarantees that account for at least 10% of their total net assets – a ratio surpassing all other regions, according to Lv Pin, an analyst from CITIC Securities. “Private firms in Shandong have been exposed to more risks as they are caught up in the cross-guarantee trap, with bonds being dumped on the secondary market,” said Chen Su, bond portfolio manager at Qingdao Rural Commercial Bank Co. And, as noted above, local companies started suffering more financing difficulties as banks cut lending to this region earlier this year, Su said.

What makes this particular problem especially vexing is that, like a loose thread, once one company with cross-guarantees finds itself unable to fund its debt obligations, a cross-guarantee cascade is sprung, and dozens of other firms may end up unable to either satisfy their “guaranteed” commitments to the original debtor, until – ultimately – they are unable repay their own creditors. Bloomberg notes that cross-guarantee troubles have been cropping up for a while: “When a disclosure last year showed that Shandong Yuhuang Chemical Co. had guaranteed 1.35 billion yuan of obligations tied to Hongye Chemical Group, yields on Yuhuang’s 2020 dollar note shot up more than 2.30 percentage points in a week.”

For now, there hasn’t been a default serious enough to drag down numerous firms at the same time, although that may soon change. However, to make sure it doesn’t, China is engaging in what it does best to avoid a credit crisis: government funded bailouts. Sure enough, the province of Shandong is making efforts to avert any credit collapse. Its state assets regulator said a government-backed 10 billion yuan fund will be set up to address liquidity risks at listed companies, the China Securities Journal reported on Friday. More broadly, as we reported two weeks ago, China’s central bank has launched initiatives to aid credit to small and medium enterprises, and support bond issuance.

The chart below shows the VIX Volatility Index, which appears to be forming a triangle pattern that may indicate that another big move is ahead. If the VIX breaks out of this pattern in a convincing manner, it would likely lead to even higher volatility and fear (which would correspond with another leg down in the stock market). On the other hand, if the VIX breaks down from this pattern, it could be the sign of a more extended market bounce or Santa Claus rally ahead.

In my early-October volatility warning, one of the charts I showed was the inverted 10-year/2-year Treasury spread and how it leads the VIX by approximately three years. According to this logic, the January and October volatility spikes were only the beginning of a much larger bullish volatility cycle (ie., one that accompanies a full-blown bear market).

Folks who went through the wholesale Nasdaq destruction of 2000-2002 will just smile mildly because that’s when the Nasdaq, as the dotcom bubble imploded, lost 78%. Given our Everything Bubble is even bigger and crazier, the Nasdaq’s current sell-off barely registers on my own Richter scale, so to speak. The Dow fell 1.6%, is down just 7.2% from its peak, and for the year is clinging to a 1.2% gain. And the S&P 500 dropped 1.7% today and is down 8.5% from the peak. It too remains, if by the thinnest margin, in the green for the year. Nevertheless, real sums have started to evaporate. And much of it happened with the biggest stocks in so-called tech.

The seven FANGMAN stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google’s parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, and NVIDIA – got hosed today. Again. Their combined market cap dropped 4.4% today, giving up $170 billion without breaking into a sweat. Since their combined market-cap peak of $4.63 trillion at the end of August, $905 billion have dissolved into ambient air. Down 19.6% in ca. 11 weeks. Despite the sell-off, the FANGMAN as a whole are still green for the year, and are back where they’d first been on January 11. So, from that perspective, this $905 billion that disappeared isn’t any kind of big deal unless it’s your money that disappeared along with it:

Let’s start by blaming Apple due to its number 1 mega-cap status. Its shares dropped nearly 4% today and are down 20.4% from their peak at the beginning of October. Once upon a time, the company was worth $1.12 trillion. It ended the day at $882 billion. $238 billion gone in ca. eight weeks. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear from an Apple supplier blaming an unnamed huge customer that can only be Apple for having to slash their revenue forecasts – apparently because three iPhone models are not selling very well. Apple’s principle that it can always make up for falling sales of devices by raising prices even further on the fewer devices it sells can only succeed for so long. At some point, consumers switch to something else or just refuse to “upgrade” at an ever faster rate, as Apple has to raise prices at an ever faster rate…. You know where this is going.

Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn faces being fired this week after being arrested in Japan over allegations of financial misconduct, the firm said Monday, in a stunning fall from grace for one of the world’s best-known businessmen. Ghosn’s arrest and his likely dismissal from Nissan, as well as possibly from Mitsubishi and Renault, sent shockwaves through the auto industry, where he is a towering figure, credited with turning around several major manufacturers. Besides being chairman of Nissan, the 64-year-old is also CEO of Renault and leads the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance.

Nissan’s board will meet Thursday to decide his fate, and Mitsubishi said it would propose he be dismissed as chairman “promptly.” Renault said its board would meet “shortly”, after Ghosn was detained over allegations including underreporting his income. At a hastily organised press conference, Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa expressed “despair,” but also suggested that Ghosn had accrued too much power and eluded proper oversight. “Too much authority was given to one person in terms of governance,” he told reporters at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama. “I have to say that this is a dark side of the Ghosn era which lasted for a long time.”

The news of Ghosn’s downfall emerged unexpectedly on Monday evening, with local media first reporting he was being questioned by prosecutors and that Nissan’s headquarters was being raided. Shortly afterwards, Nissan said in a statement that it had been investigating Ghosn and Representative Director Greg Kelly for months after a whistleblower report. “These two gentleman are arrested this evening, that’s what I understand,” Saikawa said at the press conference. He said the company had uncovered years of financial misconduct including under-reporting of income and inappropriate personal use of company assets.

Waiting for the King to die. Then let the war games begin. Meanwhile, can Trump afford to contradict the CIA? If he follows the CIA conclusion that MbS did it, what risk is that to the petrodollar? Shouldn’t Congress speak out on this?

Amid international uproar over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, some members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family are agitating to prevent Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from becoming king, three sources close to the royal court said. Dozens of princes and cousins from powerful branches of the Al Saud family want to see a change in the line of succession but would not act while King Salman – the crown prince’s 82-year-old father – is still alive, the sources said. They recognize that the king is unlikely to turn against his favorite son, known in the West as MbS. Rather, they are discussing the possibility with other family members that after the king’s death, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, 76, a younger full brother of King Salman and uncle of the crown prince, could take the throne, according to the sources.

Prince Ahmed, King Salman’s only surviving full brother, would have the support of family members, the security apparatus and some Western powers, one of the Saudi sources said. Prince Ahmed returned to Riyadh in October after 2-1/2 months abroad. During the trip, he appeared to criticize the Saudi leadership while responding to protesters outside a London residence chanting for the downfall of the Al Saud dynasty. He was one of only three people on the Allegiance Council, made up of the ruling family’s senior members, who opposed MbS becoming crown prince in 2017, two Saudi sources said at the time.

Germany decides for 26 other sovereign nations who they can let in (yeah, they talked to France and UK). Can Hungary do the same? If not, that’s a really big problem for the EU. Some more equal than others.

Germany’s foreign minister says Berlin has banned 18 Saudi nationals from entering Europe’s border-free Schengen zone because they are believed to be connected to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Heiko Maas told reporters in Brussels on Monday that Germany issued the ban for the 26-country zone in close co-ordination with France, which is part of the Schengen area, and Britain, which is not. “There are more questions than answers in this case, with the crime itself and who is behind it,” he said. Turkish and Saudi authorities say that Khashoggi was killed on Oct. 2 in Istanbul by a team from the kingdom, after he went to the Saudi Consulate to get marriage documents.

Maas said the 18 Saudis are “allegedly connected to this crime” but gave no further information. His Berlin office said they can’t release the names due to German privacy protections. The move comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said there was no reason for him to listen to a recording of the “very violent, very vicious” killing of Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post who had been critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

France will decide very soon to impose sanctions on individuals linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Monday. “We are working very closely with Germany at this moment … and we will decide ourselves a certain number of sanctions very quickly over what we know (about the murder),” Le Drian told Europe 1 radio when asked whether Paris would follow Germany in imposing travel bans on Saudi individuals. “But we believe that we need to go beyond that, because the whole truth needs to be known.” “We want all the truth to be established and today it’s not the case. When I say all the truth, I mean the circumstances, those responsible need to be designated and once we’ve decided ourselves on the subject then we’ll take the necessary sanctions.”

French reaction has been relatively guarded given it is keen to retain its influence with Riyadh and protect commercial relations spanning energy, finance and military weapons sales. Asked about a CIA assessment blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for the killing and whether he could stay in his position, Le Drian said Paris had no intention of meddling in Saudi affairs. “He took some very strong initiatives that nobody was expecting … very significant initiatives and a modernization project that everyone appreciated,” Le Drian said. “What we’re seeing today is that it’s more complicated than that, but we don’t intend to meddle in how the Saudi authorities are going to resolve this.”

The prospect for peace – or at least a lasting ceasefire – is advancing rapidly following a surprise weekend proposal by Yemen’s Houghis to halt all attacks on Saudi coalition forces. On Sunday the head of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi Supreme Revolutionary Committee Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said “We are willing to freeze and stop military operations” — something which now appears to have taken effect, according to a breaking Reuters report. In the biggest turning point in the war which has raged since 2015, Reuters confirms: “Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Monday they were halting drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their Yemeni allies, responding to a demand from the United Nations.”

“We announce our initiative…to halt missile and drone strikes on the countries of aggression,” an official Houthi statement reads. Crucially, it appears this halt in fighting was precipitated by a Saudi agreement to the Houthi extension of an olive branch as according to the AFP Yemen’s internationally recognized Saudi-backed government says it has informed UN envoy Martin Griffiths it is ready to take part in proposed peace talks with Houthi rebels to be held in Sweden. “The [Saudi-backed Yemen] government has informed the UN envoy to Yemen … that it will send a government delegation to the talks with the aim of reaching a political solution,” Yemen’s pro-Saudi foreign ministry said, quoted by the official Saba news agency.

[..] On Monday Saudi King Salman told his country’s top advisory body, the Shura Council: “our support for Yemen was not an option but a duty… to help the Yemeni people confront the Iran-backed militias” — choosing to frame the ceasefire as if Riyadh has been on the side of “the people” the whole time. The King agreed there should be a “political solution” and a “comprehensive national dialogue” in Yemen, according to Reuters.

Recent press reports indicated that Brenda Snipes submitted her resignation from her position as Broward County Supervisor of Elections. The news does little to ameliorate the devastating corruption riddling Broward County politics. In the eyes of many observers, Snipes and her associates should rightfully be serving prison sentences for repeated election rigging that became colloquially known as the ‘Brenda Snipes Process.’ Shortly after the news was announced, Tim Canova called for the resignation of Snipes’s Director, Dozel Spencer. Likewise, many point out that Brenda Snipes is simply the public face of a deeply corrupt political system, and without real change, business will most likely continue as usual in the Southern Florida county.

In this writer’s opinion, two steps are as necessary as they are unlikely to be implemented: invalidation of the congressional race in the 23rd Congressional district, and prosecution of those involved in election rigging, including Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. As readers may recall, Brenda Snipes and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz have been responsible for multiple instances actual election interference and actual data breaches that may have benefitted foreign interests. While the entire beltway establishment collectively lost its mind over fictitious allegations of Russian hacking and election interference, the real culprits have escaped both punishment and press scrutiny. It was Wasserman-Schultz who infamously worked to tip the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 Democratic Primary.

She is the only defendant named personally in the ongoing DNC Fraud lawsuit, in which lawyers for the defense infamously argued that the DNC has the right to favor one primary candidate over another, later claiming that such practice is protected by the first amendment, despite the fact that it runs contrary to the party’s charter. Shortly before this year’s midterms, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice announced it would not prosecute the Awan scandal, in which Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was also personally embroiled. Disobedient Media’s Kenneth Whittle reported on concerns that the Awan brothers may have passed sensitive material stolen from Congress members to countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and China via Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.

The White House said Monday it restored CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass, as well as instituted a set of rules to govern future news conferences. Acosta’s pass had been revoked — then temporarily restored by a judge — following a testy news conference with President Donald Trump. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the administration notified Acosta his pass was restored, but also that he and other reporters would need to abide by four rules. The rules direct a journalist to ask a single question; permit journalists follow-up questions at the discretion of the president or other officials; require journalists to give up a microphone to other journalists; and threaten the revocation of journalists’ passes for not respecting the rules.

Sanders also hinted at the possibility more rules could be forthcoming. “It would be a great loss for all if, instead of relying on the professionalism of White House journalists, we were compelled to devise a lengthy and detailed code of conduct for White House events,” she said in a statement. Acosta and Trump sparred at a Nov. 7 news conference. Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, later temporarily restored Acosta’s credentials. The rules and restoration of his pass come after the administration initially indicated it planned to try to keep excluding the CNN reporter from the White House.

As the UK political establishment rips itself to pieces over Brexit, a far greater crisis continues to afflict millions of victims of Tory austerity. A devastating UN report into poverty in the UK provides incontrovertible evidence that the enemy of the British people is the very ruling class that has gone out of its way these past few years to convince them it is Russia. Professor Philip Alston, in his capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, spent two weeks touring the United Kingdom. He did so investigating the impact of eight years of one of the most extreme austerity programs among advanced G20 economies in response to the 2008 financial crash and subsequent global recession.

What he found was evidence of a systematic, wilful, concerted and brutal economic war unleashed by the country’s right-wing Tory establishment against the poorest and most vulnerable section of British society – upending the lives of millions of people who were not responsible for the aforementioned financial crash and recession but who have been forced to pay the price. From the report’s introduction: “It…seems patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty. This is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense growth in foodbanks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the Government to appoint a Minister for Suicide Prevention and civil society to report in depth on unheard of levels of loneliness and isolation.”

Though as a citizen of the UK I respectfully beg to differ with the professor’s claim that such social and economic carnage seems “contrary to British values,”(on the contrary it is entirely in keeping with the values of the country’s Tory establishment, an establishment for whom the dehumanization of the poor and working class is central to its ideology), the point he makes about it being “obvious to anyone who opens their eyes,” is well made. For it is now the case that in every town and city centre in Britain, it is impossible to walk in any direction for more than a minute before coming across homeless people begging in the street. And the fact that some 13,000 of them are former soldiers, casualties of the country’s various military adventures in recent years, undertaken in service to Washington, exposes the pious platitudes peddled by politicians and the government as reverence for the troops and their ‘sacrifice,’ as insincere garbage.

A record surge in the creation of marine protected areas has taken the international community close to its goal of creating nature refuges on 17% of the world’s land and 10% of seas by 2020, according to a new UN report. Protected regions now cover more than five times the territory of the US, but the authors said this good news was often undermined by poor enforcement. Some reserves are little more than “paper parks” with little value to nature conservation. At least one has been turned into an industrial zone. More than 27m square kilometres of seas (7% of the total) and 20m sq km of land (15% of the total) now have protected status, according to the Protected Planet report, which was released on Sunday at the UN biodiversity conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Almost all of the growth has been in marine regions, most notably with the creation last year of the world’s biggest protected area: the 2m sq km Ross Sea reserve, one-fifth of which is in the Antarctic. The no-fishing zone will be managed by New Zealand and the US. “We have seen an enormous expansion in the past two years. There is now more marine protected area than terrestrial, which nobody would have predicted,” said Kathy McKinnon of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “I think we’ll continue to see a substantial increase, I’d guess, to at least 10% in the near future.” The UN convention on biological diversity says it has received national commitments for an additional 4.5m sq km of land and 16m sq km of oceans to be given protected status in the next two years.

Dozens of nations on Monday failed to agree on measures to preserve one of the planet’s most valuable fish: the bigeye tuna, backbone of a billion-dollar business that is severely overfished. Some 50 countries as well as European Union member states wrapped up a meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) in the Croatian seaside city of Dubrovnik without reaching a consensus on quotas. “It’s a setback and it’s bad news,” said Javier Garat Perez, secretary general of the Spanish fishing confederation Cepesca. Scientists shocked many in the industry last month when they warned that unless catch levels are sharply reduced, stocks of the fatty, fast-swimming predator could crash within a decade or two.

They warned that populations had fallen to less than 20 percent of historic levels. Less iconic than Atlantic bluefin but more valuable as an industry, bigeye (Thunnus obesus) – one of several so-called tropical tunas – is prized for sashimi in Japan and canned for supermarket sales worldwide. Three years ago, ICCAT introduced a 65,000-tonne catch limit for the seven largest fishers of bigeye, and a moratorium in certain areas of ocean. But other countries are not bound by the quotas, and bigeye hauls last year topped 80,000 tonnes – far too high to begin replenishing stocks.

Arguably the most important power at stake in Tuesday’s election was Congressional oversight, and the most important change may be Adam Schiff at the House Intelligence Committee. The Democrat says his top priority is re-opening the Trump-Russia collusion probe, but more important may be his intention to stop investigating how the FBI and Justice Department abused their power in 2016. So let’s walk through what we’ve learned to date. Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight).

Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn’t made it public. But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a “dossier” on Donald Trump’s supposed links to Russia.

Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion. House investigators have also documented the FBI’s lack of judgment in using the dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. The four FISA warrants against Mr. Page show that the FBI relied almost exclusively on the unproven Clinton-financed accusations, as well as a news story that was also ginned up by Mr. Steele.

[..] All of which puts an additional onus on Mr. Trump to declassify key FBI and Justice documents sought by Mr. Nunes and other House investigators before Mr. Schiff buries the truth. A few weeks ago Mr. Trump decided to release important documents, only to renege under pressure from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and members of the intelligence community. Mr. Sessions resigned this week and perhaps Mr. Rosenstein will as well. Meantime, Mr. Trump should revisit his decision and help Mr. Nunes and House Republicans finish the job in the lame duck session of revealing the truth about the misuse of U.S. intelligence and the FISA court in a presidential election.

In the early evening following the midterm elections, Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s wife was home alone when she suddenly became startled by a loud thumping at her door. The thumping came from a group of Antifa radicals, whose desire it was to strike terror into the hearts of Carlson’s family. Susan Carlson ran upstairs as the mob that CNN refers to as “protesters” screamed disgusting threats at the Carlson residence, spray-painted the driveway and continued to try to force entry through the front door, which they broke. The only thing seemingly missing from this display of intimidation and hatred were burning tiki torches.

While the radical left seems preoccupied with labeling everyone that disagrees with their political views as white supremacist Nazis, including Israel-loving Middle Eastern women such as myself, threatening displays like this seem awfully similar to the days of the KKK burning crosses on the lawns of blacks they wanted to leave town. That was the message these radicals wanted to send to Tucker Carlson, along with his wife and children, who thank God were not home at the time: leave town and shut up. As someone who has had my own personal address posted publicly by a leftist reporter, the thought of a mother of four hiding in her upstairs closet fearing for her life sends chills down my spine, as it should any decent human being.

How did we get here? Let’s take a trip down memory lane: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up … If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Those were the exact words of Congresswoman Maxine Waters at a rally in June 2018. Waters then doubled down on her calls for intimidation and harassment in an MSNBC interview, declaring that she has “no sympathy” for Trump supporters. “The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’

[..] Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder recently corrected Michelle Obama’s notion that “when they go low, we go high,” referring of course to anyone who didn’t support her husband’s political agenda. “When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democrat party is all about.” Holder proclaimed to a crowd of cheering supporters. Or how about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

Of course The New York Times is no longer a newspaper in the traditional sense, but an advocacy and propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. They’re pushing this desperate gambit because it’s clear that Mr. Trump is taking the gloves off now in this long-running battle. What’s at stake is whether the DOJ will prosecute the actual and obvious collusion that occurred during and after the 2016 election — namely, the misconduct of the highest DOJ and FBI officials in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign to cook up the bogus Russia-gate case, and the subsequent scramble to cover up their activities when Mrs. Clinton lost the election and they realized the evidence trail of this felonious activity would not be shoved down the memory hole by Clinton appointees.

The result has been two years with no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion and two years of DOJ / FBI stonewalling over the release of pertinent documents in the matter. There is already an established and certified evidence trail indicating that James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Lisa Page, and others (including former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper) acted illegally in politicizing their offices. Some of these figures have been subject to criminal referrals by the DOJ Inspector General, Mr. Horowitz. Some of them are liable to further criminal investigation Many of them have been singing to grand juries out of the news spotlight.

Whether Mr. Whitaker remains in his new role, or is replaced soon by a permanent AG confirmed by the Senate, the momentum has clearly shifted. The Democrats, and especially the forces still aligned with Hillary, are running scared all of a sudden. Thus, all the bluster coming from party hacks such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY 10th Dist), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Mr. Nadler takes the gavel of the House Judiciary Committee in January and is promising a three-ring circus of investigations when he does. If the House moves to a quixotic impeachment effort, they will find that to be a dangerous two-way street, since Mr. Trump’s legal team can also introduce testimony in his defense that will embarrass and incriminate the Democrats. Anyway, the Senate is extremely unlikely to convict Mr. Trump in a trial.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank, said Trump had both won and lost. “There’s a split verdict. The voters who made him came back and he maintained a 46% coalition. He lost the voters he lost two years ago in slightly bigger numbers. The Clinton coalition is strong and growing stronger, but it’s electorally inefficient. Trump has kept his minority coalition together and all he needs is a slight improvement to be assured of re-election.” Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) thinktank on Thursday, Olsen noted the growing percentage of women in the Democratic party and suggested: “I think it’s very likely that Donald Trump will be facing a woman.”

“And if Donald Trump, who’s known to be ruthless to subordinates, wanted to change the odds in his favour, I think he should dump Mike Pence and select [former UN ambassador] Nikki Haley. “The biggest thing that the Democrats continually push, and the media continually push, is that he is a racist and a sexist, and that is one of the things that weighs very heavily on the Rino- [“Republican in name only”] educated person. So you say: ‘I’ve changed America and the person who’s going to continue this is going to be a competent executive who understands foreign policy and ran her state and is a woman of colour, Nikki Haley.’ It will flummox the left.”

A federal appeals court that is weighing a legal challenge to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s authority said Friday it wanted to know whether the sudden ouster of Attorney General Jeff Sessions could impact or change the outcome of how it should rule. The court’s order directed each party in the case to file briefs by Nov. 19 outlining, “what, if any effect, the November 7, 2018 designation of an Acting Attorney General different from the official who appointed Special Counsel Mueller has on this case.” The order came one day after a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral arguments on whether Mueller was unlawfully appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 and wielded too much power.

The challenge to Mueller’s authority was being brought by Andrew Miller, an associate of President Donald Trump’s long-time political adviser, Roger Stone. Several of Stone’s associates have been subpoenaed by a grand jury in recent months, as part of Mueller’s probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Miller defied the subpoena in May, was later held in civil contempt, and filed a lawsuit alleging that Mueller’s appointment violated the U.S. Constitution and also that Rosenstein had no authority to hire him. Mueller was named special counsel by Rosenstein after Sessions recused himself from the probe. However, Rosenstein lost his role as Mueller’s supervisor on Wednesday after Trump forced Sessions to resign and replaced him with Matt Whitaker.

It was a down day for big tech. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook — the five most valuable U.S. tech companies — lost a combined $75 billion in market value on Friday. They led a 1.7 percent drop in the S&P 500 tech index and a similar slide in the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Amazon was the worst performer of the group, dropping 2.4 percent. Stocks fell across the board Friday as declines in oil prices and skepticism about a trade deal with China raised concerns that economic growth is headed for a slowdown. Thursday’s report from the Federal Reserve pointing to future rate hikes compounded worries and sent investors fleeing from tech companies, which are particularly susceptible to swings in the economy.

Tech stocks are coming off their worst month since 2008. The Nasdaq closed October down 9.2 percent, with Amazon and Alphabet leading the decline down 20 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively. Analysts were underwhelmed by recent tech earnings reports, including those from Amazon, Apple and Alphabet. Amazon gave lower-than-expected guidance going into the holiday season and Apple announced it would no longer disclose unit sales for iPhone, iPad and Mac devices.

Yelp cratered as much as 32 percent Friday, a day after releasing third-quarter earnings that revealed advertisers are abandoning the site and denting revenue. Shares fell as low as $29.33, a new 52-week low, before paring some losses to close nearly 27 percent down at $31.92. The plunge makes for the stock’s worst day of trading since going public in 2012. Yelp added zero net new advertising customers during the quarter. Yelp earlier this year switched from long-term advertising contracts in local markets to more flexible, nonterm contracts. That change resulted in significant contract cancellations. Though the cancellations were expected, Yelp failed to compensate with lower-than-expected gross customer adds.

The company reported revenue of $241 million for the quarter, just shy of analyst projections of $245 million. “We do not believe that there was any one single factor behind the new sales shortfall relative to our expectations. Instead, a number of smaller, compounding issues arose, including slower-than-expected sales head count growth, a change in advertising promotions, a technical issue in flowing leads to our reps and a lower success rate in contacting business decision-makers by our outbound sales calls,” Chief Financial Officer Charles Baker said on the company’s earnings call.

Jeremy Corbyn has said that Brexit cannot be stopped in a blow to Labour MPs trying to inch the party towards backing a second referendum. The Labour leader’s comments mark a departure from the party’s official position, which leaves the prospect of fresh vote firmly on the table, including the option to remain in the European Union. Labour’s preferred option is to campaign for a general election but as the Brexit talks enter the chaotic final stages, the party is under pressure to soften its stance towards a new public vote. It comes as transport minister Jo Johnson dramatically resigned in protest at Theresa May’s Brexit plan, saying Britain is “barrelling towards an incoherent Brexit” and demanding a Final Say referendum.

Delegates at Labour’s conference in September, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion saying the party “must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”. Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer also received a standing ovation when he told the conference hall that remaining in the EU could be on the ballot paper in a future vote. But tensions remain over the issue, as influential figures such as Unite boss Len McCluskey and shadow chancellor John McDonnell are unenthusiastic about a re-run of the Brexit vote. Labour has agreed to vote down the prime minister’s Brexit deal if it fails to measure up to its tests on jobs and workers’ rights, which senior figures believe could allow Labour to pursue its preferred option – a general election.

In an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Mr Corbyn was asked if he would stop Brexit. He replied: “We can’t stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered. What we can do is recognise the reasons why people voted Leave.” Mr Corbyn said the Brexit vote was triggered by people who were “totally angered” by the way their communities had been left behind. He also indicated he felt sorry for the prime minister over the “impossible task” of reaching agreement with Brussels and uniting the Tory party, Mr Corbyn said: “I am a decent human being, I feel sorry for anyone in distress. But the best way for anyone to alleviate distress is to take yourself away from the source of it.”

Theresa May has been dealt a blow in the Brexit negotiations by EU leaders ahead of a crunch week during which the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, had been expected to visit Brussels to unveil the negotiated agreement. Ambassadors for the EU27, including France and Germany, told the European commission that they would need to scrutinise any deal reached with the British before it was made public and a special summit called. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has largely been given free rein until now. An “optimistic” timetable would have seen Raab arrive on Tuesday to present the legal text agreed between the commission and the British government.

But during a two-hour meeting with the the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, the member states’ representatives insisted they would not be steamrollered into accepting the agreement secured between the two negotiating teams. They told the commission they would need the best part of a week to go through the text should there be an agreement in a sign of the growing nervousness over the prospect of giving away an all-UK customs union in the withdrawal agreement. The development makes it less likely that a November Brexit summit could be convened. EU officials have privately said that 25 November is the last possible date for a summit, and that it would need to be called early next week to allow preparations in EU capitals. May’s chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, is expected to visit Brussels on Sunday given the lack of time to find agreement.

U.S. crude prices fell Friday for a 10th consecutive session, sinking deeper into bear market territory and wiping out the benchmark’s gains for the year. The 10-day decline is the longest losing streak for U.S. crude since mid-1984, according to Refinitiv data. Crude futures fell for a fifth straight week as growing output from key producers and a deteriorating outlook for oil demand deepen a sell-off spurred by October’s broader market plunge. The drop marks a stunning reversal from last month, when oil prices hit nearly four-year highs as the market braced for potential shortages once U.S. sanctions on Iran snapped back into place.

“The market’s not tight. I think there are windows where you could perceive it to be tight, and I think the markets got caught into that,” Christian Malek, head of EMEA oil and gas research at J.P. Morgan, told CNBC on Friday. “The reality is that we’re still in a world where we’re overproducing and we’ve got surplus.” U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 48 cents lower at $60.19 on Friday. The contract is now down nearly half a percent this year. It fell as low $59.26 on Friday, its weakest level in about nine months.

An oil shortage is coming says Goldman Sachs, because firms cannot fully invest in future production. Global oil majors are increasingly looking to invest in lower-carbon areas of the energy sector, as they react to pressure for cleaner energy, both from government policy and investors. “In the 2020’s we are going to have a clear physical shortage of oil because nobody is allowed to fully invest in future oil production,” Michele Della Vigna, Head of EMEA Natural Resources Research at Goldman Sachs told CNBC Friday. “The low carbon transition will come through higher, not lower oil prices,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Della Vigna said “Big Oils” are starting to understand that if they want to be widely owned by investors, they need to show that they are serious about minimizing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The Goldman analyst said oil firms only had to look at the steep derating of coal companies over the last 5 years to understand the shift in investor sentiment. Della Vigna said until a transition to full renewables is made, the interim battle will be to own a greater market share of gas-based power. The analyst said with a huge capital cost of gas infrastructure, big state-backed companies looked best placed. “We talk about the new seven sisters emerging, dominating the global oil and gas market because nobody else can finance these mega-projects,” he said.

Brussels and Rome are in a constant back and forth over budget negotiations but analysts told CNBC that it is the markets that matter the most. Officials from the European Union (EU) and Italy have found themselves in a deadlock after the former’s economic forecasts showed the Italian economy would grow at a slower pace in the next two years than Rome thinks. The Italian government was quick to dismiss, blaming the EU for its “inadequate and partial” analysis of the country’s spending plans. These comments came after Brussels said earlier on the day that Italy’s 2019 deficit will reach 2.9 percent and not 2.4 percent as Rome insists.

Both sides have clashed over Italy’s 2019 budget plans after the anti-establishment government promised to increase spending, challenging European fiscal rules. On Friday, Italy’s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said Brussels’ proposed deficit cuts would be “suicide” for the country’s economy. The unyielding stance from Rome triggered a rise in the yield spread between German and Italian debt, a common measure of risk for European investors. Analysts told CNBC the standoff looks set to continue, and that the EU is laying the ground to open the process that could eventually lead to sanctions — though no EU country has ever been fined for breaching spending limits.

[..] Yields on Italian debt have risen significantly since May — when the two populist parties, Five Star Movement and Lega, joined forces to form the next cabinet. Investors have fretted about the government’s spending plans given that Italy has a massive debt pile — the second largest in the EU at about 130 percent of GDP. In the last seven days alone, the yield on the 10-year Italian bond is up by about 12 basis points. Looking at its performance throughout the year, there has been an increase of about 172 basis points. “The true guardians of fiscal discipline will be, as usual, financial markets,” Lorenzo Codogno, chief economist at LC Macro Advisors said in a note to clients Thursday.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen is opting to refuel its aircraft independently going forward, ending a controversial collaboration with US military assets. The Saudi Press agency released a statement on Saturday explaining that the coalition was able to “increase their capacity” for refueling their aircraft and would do so independently going forward. US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis confirmed the decision was made in consultation with the US government. On Friday, Reuters reported, citing unnamed US officials, that Washington considering ending the refueling of coalition aircraft in Yemen, citing both the coalition’s own increased capabilities and growing international outrage over the human consequences of the war in Yemen.

Opposition to US collaboration with the Saudi coalition in Yemen has increased following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi-led coalition has been accused of targeting hospitals, water infrastructure, and other civilian targets, and raids on wedding parties and the recent bombing of a school bus have sparked international condemnation. The US and UK have both been criticized for continuing to sell arms to the coalition despite their targeting of civilians and alleged war crimes.

If ever you want to know who f*cked and f*cked up we are. Supermarkets can sell a million products for which a million acres of rainforests are burned and cut down. But when one of them decides not to play that game, its message is forbidden because it’s too political.

What a lovely Christmas ad. We should have tons of those. And of course you can ask how much of it is aimed at profits, but banning it is insane.

“There’s a human in my forest and I don’t know what to do. He destroyed all of our trees for your food and your shampoo.”

British supermarket chain Iceland has been banned from showing its Christmas advert on television because it has been deemed to breach political advertising rules. The discount supermarket company planned to use a Greenpeace-made animated short film, voiced by actress Emma Thompson, called “Rang-tan”, about the destruction of the rainforest caused by palm oil production and its impact on endangered orangutans. Iceland, which earlier this year announced its intention to remove palm oil from its products by the end of 2018, said the film fitted its agenda, leading to its decision to use the film as its Christmas advert.

The film was banned by Clearcast, which is responsible for the clearance of television ads before they are broadcast, on the grounds of it being seen to support a political issue. Under the 2003 Communications Act, an advert is deemed to contravene the bar on political advertising if it is “wholly or mainly of a political nature” or is “directed towards a political end”. Iceland, which trades from 900 stores and specializes in frozen food, said it hoped the advert would raise awareness and improve people’s understanding of rainforest destruction from palm oil production, which it said appears in more than 50 percent of all supermarket products.

One of the best Christmas TV ads in years has been banned for being “too political”. I don’t think they’ve worked out how social media works just yet. pic.twitter.com/GuzS70jaPk

The United States called Tuesday for a ceasefire and peace talks in Yemen, as the Saudi-led military coalition sent more than 10,000 new troops toward a vital rebel-held port city ahead of a new assault. Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said the US had been watching the conflict “for long enough,” adding that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are in a US-backed coalition fighting Shiite Huthi rebels, are ready for talks. “We have got to move toward a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it some time in the future,” Mattis said at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. “We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”

He said the US is calling for all warring parties to meet with United Nations special envoy Martin Griffiths in Sweden in November and “come to a solution.” US-Saudi ties have cooled in recent weeks after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the conservative kingdom, that has also tarnished the image of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in the conflict between embattled Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, whose government is recognized by the United Nations, and the Huthis in 2015. Nearly 10,000 people have since been killed and the country now stands at the brink of famine, with more than 22 million Yemenis — three quarters of the population — in need of humanitarian assistance.

[..] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an end to all coalition air strikes in Yemen’s populated areas. “The time is now for the cessation of hostilities, including missile and UAV (drone) strikes from Huthi-controlled areas into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” Pompeo said in a statement. “Subsequently, coalition air strikes must cease in all populated areas in Yemen.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on Saudi Arabia’s chief prosecutor to find out who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and not spare “certain people” in his investigation. “Who sent these 15 people? As Saudi public prosecutor, you have to ask that question, so you can reveal it,” Erdogan said, referring to the 15-man team suspected of being behind the hit. “Now we have to solve this case. No need to prevaricate, it makes no sense to try to save certain people,” he told reporters in Ankara. Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain paperwork ahead of his upcoming wedding. His body has not yet been found.

[..] Erdogan said that during the talks Fidan requested the 18 suspects be sent to Turkey for trial, as the killing took place in Istanbul. The Istanbul prosecutor’s office last week prepared a written request for the extradition of the 18 suspects “involved in the premeditated murder”, the justice ministry said, but Riyadh rejected Ankara’s request. Erdogan also urged Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to explain who the “local co-conspirators” were that were reportedly given Khashoggi’s body after his death. “Again either the Saudi foreign minister or the 18 suspects must explain who the local co-conspirators are. Let’s know who this co-conspirator is, we can shed further light. We cannot let this subject end mid-way.”

Famed housing-watcher Robert Shiller said Tuesday that the weakening housing market reminded him of the last market top, just before the subprime housing bubble burst, slashing prices by nearly a third and costing millions of Americans their homes. Home price gains moderated again in the most recent version of the closely-watched housing index that bears his name, which was released Tuesday, and Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, told Yahoo Finance that such data shows “a sign of weakness.” Housing pivots take more time than those in the stock market, Shiller said. Still, “the housing market does have a momentum component and we’re seeing a clipping of momentum at this time.”

When a startled reporter reminded Shiller that 2006 predated the greatest financial crisis in a lifetime, the Yale economist acknowledged that any correction would likely be far less severe. “The drop in home prices in the financial crisis was the most severe drop in the U.S. market since my data begin in 1890,” Shiller said. “It could be that we’re primed to repeat it because it’s in our memory and we’re thinking about it but still I wouldn’t expect something as severe as the Great Financial Crisis coming on right now. There could be a significant correction or bear market, but I’m waiting and seeing now.”

The great Chinese growth slowdown has been proceeding in stages for the past two years. The reason is simple. Much of China’s “growth” (about 25% of the total) has consisted of wasted infrastructure investment in ghost cities and white elephant transportation infrastructure. That investment was financed with debt that now cannot be repaid. This was fine for creating short-term jobs and providing business to cement, glass and steel vendors, but it was not a sustainable model since the infrastructure either was not used at all or did not generate sufficient revenue. China’s future success depends on high-value-added technology and increased consumption. But shifting to intellectual property and the consumer means slowing down on infrastructure, which will slow the economy.

In turn, that means exposing the bad debt for what it is, which risks a financial and liquidity crisis. China started to do this last year but quickly turned tail when the economy slowed. Now the economy has slowed so much that markets are collapsing. But doesn’t China have over $1 trillion of reserves to prop up its financial system? On paper, that’s true. But in reality, China is “short” U.S. dollars. The Chinese may have $1.4 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities in its reserve position, but they need those assets possibly to bail out their banking system or defend the yuan. Meanwhile, the Chinese banking sector, which in many ways is an extension of the state, owes $318 billion in U.S. dollar-denominated deposits of commercial paper.

From a bank’s perspective, borrowing in dollars is going short dollars because you need dollar assets to back up those liabilities if the original lenders want their money back. For the most part, the banks don’t have those assets because they converted the dollar to yuan to prop up local real estate Ponzis and local corporations. There’s not much left over to bail out the corporate, individual and real estate sectors. This is all part of a global “dollar shortage” attributable to Fed tightening, both in the forms of higher rates but also a reduction in base money. A dollar shortage seems implausible in a world where the Fed printed $4.4 trillion. But while the Fed was printing, the world borrowed over $70 trillion (on top of prior loans), so the dollar shortage is real. The math is inescapable.

China’s manufacturing sector in October expanded at its weakest pace in over two years, hurt by slowing domestic and external demand, in a sign of deepening cracks in the economy from an intensifying trade war with the United States. Anxiety about China’s cooling growth and its likely drag on the global economy have vexed financial markets recently, and Wednesday’s official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) indicates more stress for investors through coming months. The official PMI – which gives global investors their first look at business conditions in China at the start of the last quarter of the year – fell to 50.2 in October, the lowest since July 2016 and down from 50.8 in September.

It was a touch above the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction for a 27th straight month, but undershot the 50.6 forecast in a Reuters poll. The latest reading suggests a further loss of momentum in the world’s second-biggest economy, and the deteriorating environment for businesses could prompt more policy support from Beijing on top of a raft of recent initiatives. “All the numbers from China’s PMI release today confirm a broad-based decline in economic activity,” said Raymond Yeung, chief economist for China at ANZ in a client note, adding that conditions for the private sector is “much worse” than headline data suggested. “Besides an expected reserve requirement ratio (RRR) cut next January, we expect future supportive policy actions to be measured. The government’s priority is to avoid a financial blow-up.”

Those weighty words of praise were tweeted out Tuesday by Ray Dalio, founder of hedge-fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates. Dalio’s social-media nod to the former Fed chair coincides with the release of Volcker’s memoir, “Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government.”

In his new book, Volcker says he’s worried about the impact of money in politics and argues that the U.S. is devolving into a plutocracy. “We face a huge challenge in this country to restore a sense of public purpose and of trust in government,” he wrote in the book. “It will require critically needed reforms in our political processes and leaders who can restore and preserve a consensus upon which our great democracy can depend.” Volcker, 91, served as Fed chair from 1979 until 1987, and he’s widely credited for stopping runaway inflation during that time. He was also chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under Obama from 2009 to 2011.

Dalio wasn’t the only one to give Volcker some love in light of his memoir. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times is also a big fan, saying that he’s “the greatest man I have known,” because “he is endowed to the highest degree with what the Romans called virtus (virtue): moral courage, integrity, sagacity, prudence and devotion to the service of country.” Wolf said “the pinnacle of Volcker’s career” was when he achieved something many thought impossible: he slew inflation. “Great credit is due to Jimmy Carter, who appointed him, and Ronald Reagan, who supported him. But Volcker did it, despite great criticism,” Wolf explained. “The costs were huge. But he was right: it had to be done.”

The Democratic Party war on white people and their dastardly privilege has been the theme all year long, with its flanking movement against white men especially and super-especially the hetero-normative white male villains who rape and oppress everybody else. Anyway, that’s the strategy du jour. I’m not persuaded that it’s going to work so well in the coming election. The party could not have issued a clearer message than “white men not welcome here.” Very well, then, they’ll vote somewhere else for somebody else. And if it happens that the Dems don’t prevail, and don’t manage to get their hands on the machinery of congress — then what?

For one thing, a lot of people get indicted, especially former top officers from various glades of the Intel swamp. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given the numbers of them already called before grand juries and fingered by inspectors general. But it may be shocking how high up the indictments go, and how serious the charges may be: sedition… treason…? These midterm election may bring the moment when the Democratic Party finally blows up, at least enough to sweep away the current coterie of desperate idiots running it. It’s time to shove the crybabies offstage and allow a few clear-eyed adults to take the room, including men, yes even white men. And let all the shrieking, clamoring, marginal freaks return to the margins, where they belong.

Britain’s economy will suffer rising unemployment and falling household incomes that would trigger a recession should Theresa May fail to secure a deal to prevent the UK crashing out of the European Union next year, according to analysis by the global rating agency Standard & Poor’s. Property prices would slump and inflation would spike to more than 5% in a scenario that S&P said had become more likely in recent months following deadlock with Brussels over a post-Brexit deal. In a warning that included a possible downgrade to the UK’s credit rating, which would bring with it an increase in the Treasury’s borrowing costs, S&P said it still expected both sides in the Brexit talks to come to an agreement before next March, when the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union.

But it warned that the chance of a “no-deal” Brexit had risen in recent months to such an extent that it needed to warn international investors about the potential challenges ahead. [..] S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Paul Watters, said: “Our base-case scenario is that the UK and the EU will agree and ratify a Brexit deal, leading to a transition phase lasting through 2020, followed by a free trade agreement. “But we believe the risk of no deal has increased sufficiently to become a relevant rating consideration. This reflects the inability thus far of the UK and EU to reach agreement on the Northern Irish border issue, the critical outstanding component of the proposed withdrawal treaty.”

Coming only a day after the chancellor said the failure to secure a deal would force him to hold an emergency budget, S&P’s analysis joins a welter of independent reports that forecast that a split from the EU without a deal will deal a serious blow to the prospects of the UK economy. Last month rival agency Moody’s said the risks to the British economy had “risen materially” in recent months.

It’s darkness at the break of (tropical) high noon. Jean Baudrillard once defined Brazil as “the chlorophyll of our planet”. And yet a land vastly associated worldwide with the soft power of creative joie de vivre has elected a fascist for president. Brazil is a land torn apart. Former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro was elected with 55.63 percent of votes. Yet a record 31 million votes were ruled absent or null and void. No less than 46 million Brazilians voted for the Workers’ Party’s candidate, Fernando Haddad; a professor and former mayor of Sao Paulo, one of the crucial megalopolises of the Global South. The key startling fact is that over 76 million Brazilians did not vote for Bolsonaro. His first speech as president exuded the feeling of a trashy jihad by a fundamentalist sect laced with omnipresent vulgarity and the exhortation of a God-given dictatorship as the path towards a new Brazilian Golden Age.

French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Lowy has described the Bolsonaro phenomenon as “pathological politics on a large scale”. His ascension was facilitated by an unprecedented conjunction of toxic factors such as the massive social impact of crime in Brazil, leading to a widespread belief in violent repression as the only solution; the concerted rejection of the Workers’ Party, catalyzed by financial capital, rentiers, agribusiness and oligarchic interests; an evangelical tsunami; a “justice” system historically favoring the upper classes and embedded in State Department-funded “training” of judges and prosecutors, including the notorious Sergio Moro, whose single-minded goal during the alleged anti-corruption Car Wash investigation was to send Lula to prison; and the absolute aversion to democracy by vast sectors of the Brazilian ruling classes.

That is about to coalesce into a radically anti-popular, God-given, rolling neoliberal shock; paraphrasing Lenin, a case of fascism as the highest stage of neoliberalism. After all, when a fascist sells a “free market” agenda, all his sins are forgiven.

After a long, initially-successful run promoting European integration and mass immigration, German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw the bottom fall out of her political fortunes this year. This week she stepped down as leader of the formerly-dominant Christian Democrat party and promised not run again when her term as Chancellor ends in 2021. What happens next is almost certain to be chaotic, as the following chart (courtesy of this morning’s Wall Street Journal) makes clear. Note that in August of 2017 the two least popular parties were the far right Alternative for Germany (blue line) and the far left Greens (green line). In the ensuing 14 or so months AfG’s support rose from single digits to around 17% while the Greens rocketed from the bottom of the pack to 20%.

If you didn’t know what these two parties stood for you might think, “Fine, they’re new and interesting, so let them form a coalition and govern for a while.” Unfortunately they’re more likely to kill each other in street fights than work together, since the former want closed borders and free markets while the latter want increased regulation and unlimited immigration. The alternative to an AfG/Green coalition then becomes some combination of the remaining, more centrist (by European standards at least) parties. But the biggest of those parties – Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their coalition partner Social Democrats – are in freefall, precisely because of what they’ve done while in power. So there appears to be no way to put these puzzle pieces together to produce a stable government.

And – here’s where things get truly scary – a stable Germany under Merkel’s bland but firm hand has been the only thing holding the European Union and eurozone together. If Germany descends into internal turmoil without a coherent government to push the Italys and Hungarys around, European populists/nationalists will fill the resulting vacuum. Borders will be re-imposed within and without the EU, national government budgets – already above EU deficit limits in many cases – will explode. Already-debilitating debts will keep rising, and the ECB will be forced to bail out Italy for sure and probably several other member states after that.

To stand at the edge of an ocean is to face an eternity of waves and water, a shroud covering seven-tenths of the Earth. Hidden below are mountain ranges and canyons that rival anything on land. There you will find the Earth’s largest habitat, home to billions of plants and animals – the vast majority of the living things on the planet. In this little-seen world, swirling super-highway currents move warm water thousands of miles north and south from the tropics to cooler latitudes, while cold water pumps from the poles to warmer climes. It is a system that we take for granted as much as we do the circulation of our own blood. It substantially regulates the Earth’s temperature, and it has been mitigating the recent spike in atmospheric temperatures, soaking up much of human-generated heat and carbon dioxide.

Without these ocean gyres to moderate temperatures, the Earth would be uninhabitable. In the last few decades, however, the oceans have undergone unprecedented warming. Currents have shifted. These changes are for the most part invisible from land, but this hidden climate change has had a disturbing impact on marine life – in effect, creating an epic underwater refugee crisis. Reuters has discovered that from the waters off the East Coast of the United States to the coasts of West Africa, marine creatures are fleeing for their lives, and the communities that depend on them are facing disruption as a result. As waters warm, fish and other sea life are migrating poleward, seeking to maintain the even temperatures they need to thrive and breed.

The number of creatures involved in this massive diaspora may well dwarf any climate impacts yet seen on land. In the U.S. North Atlantic, for example, fisheries data show that in recent years, at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species have shifted north or deeper, or both, when compared to the norm over the past half-century. And the most dramatic of species shifts have occurred in the last 10 or 15 years. Fish have always followed changing conditions, sometimes with devastating effects for people, as the starvation that beset Norwegian fishing villages in past centuries when the herring failed to appear one season will attest. But what is happening today is different: The accelerating rise in sea temperatures, which scientists primarily attribute to the burning of fossil fuels, is causing a lasting shift in fisheries.

As Stormy Daniels and Elizabeth Warren see their ‘cases’ blow up in their faces 3 weeks before the midterms, the best PR and legal teams that money can buy are framing a Khashoggi narrative nobody will be able to credibly deny. Or at least Erdogan is not showing his hand. But now that Pompeo’s in the region anyway, let’s put this on his agenda. 12 to 13 million at risk of starvation.

Yemen could be facing the worst famine in 100 years if airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition are not halted, the UN has warned. If war continues, famine could engulf the country in the next three months, with 12 to 13 million civilians at risk of starvation, according to Lise Grande, the agency’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. She told the BBC: “I think many of us felt as we went into the 21st century that it was unthinkable that we could see a famine like we saw in Ethiopia, that we saw in Bengal, that we saw in parts of the Soviet Union – that was just unacceptable. “Many of us had the confidence that would never happen again and yet the reality is that in Yemen that is precisely what we are looking at.”

Yemen has been in the grip of a bloody civil war for three years after Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, seized much of the country, including the capital, Sana’a. The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the rebels since 2015 in support of the internationally recognised government. Thousands of civilians have been caught in the middle, trapped by minefields and barrages of mortars and airstrikes. The resulting humanitarian catastrophe has seen at least 10,000 people killed and millions displaced. Speaking on Sunday evening, Grande said: “There’s no question we should be ashamed, and we should, every day that we wake up, renew our commitment to do everything possible to help the people that are suffering and end the conflict.”

Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5bn years. Furthermore, even if the destruction of wild areas, poaching and pollution were ended within 50 years and extinction rates fell back to natural levels, it would still take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover. Many scientists think a sixth mass extinction of life on Earth has begun, propelled by human destruction of wildlife, and 83% of wild mammals have already gone.

The new work puts this in the context of the evolution and extinction of species that occurred for billions of years before modern humans arrived. “We are doing something that will last millions of years beyond us,” said Matt Davis at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the new research. “It shows the severity of what we are in right now. We’re entering what could be an extinction on the scale of what killed the dinosaurs. “That is pretty scary. We are starting to cut down the whole tree [of life], including the branch we are sitting on right now.” Ecosystems around the world have already been significantly affected by the extermination of big animals such as mammoths, he said.

[..] Davis said each lost species had its own intrinsic value, but the loss of the most distinct creatures was most damaging: “Typically, if you have something that is off by itself, it does some job that no other species is doing.” The losses are already affecting ecosystems, he said, particularly the vanishing of “megafauna”. These huge creatures roamed much of Earth until humans arrived and included giant cats, deer, beavers and armadillos. “We are now living in a world without giants,” said Davis. “So the seeds of big fruit are not dispersed any more because we don’t have mammoths or gomphotheres or giant ground sloths eating those fruits.” Another example, he said, is the widespread loss of wolves. This means smaller predators like coyotes thrive and more birds are killed, radically changing food chains.

Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.

The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas. The study’s authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates. “This study in PNAS is a real wake-up call — a clarion call — that the phenomenon could be much, much bigger, and across many more ecosystems,” said David Wagner, an expert in invertebrate conservation at the University of Connecticut who was not involved with this research. He added: “This is one of the most disturbing articles I have ever read.”

[..] “We went down in ’76, ’77 expressly to measure the resources: the insects and the insectivores in the rain forest, the birds, the frogs, the lizards,” Lister said. He came back nearly 40 years later, with his colleague Andrés García, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What the scientists did not see on their return troubled them. “Boy, it was immediately obvious when we went into that forest,” Lister said. Fewer birds flitted overhead. The butterflies, once abundant, had all but vanished. García and Lister once again measured the forest’s insects and other invertebrates, a group called arthropods that includes spiders and centipedes. The researchers trapped arthropods on the ground in plates covered in a sticky glue, and raised several more plates about three feet into the canopy.

The researchers also swept nets over the brush hundreds of times, collecting the critters that crawled through the vegetation. Each technique revealed the biomass (the dry weight of all the captured invertebrates) had significantly decreased from 1976 to the present day. The sweep sample biomass decreased to a fourth or an eighth of what it had been. Between January 1977 and January 2013, the catch rate in the sticky ground traps fell 60-fold. “Everything is dropping,” Lister said. The most common invertebrates in the rain forest — the moths, the butterflies, the grasshoppers, the spiders and others — are all far less abundant. “Holy crap,” Wagner said of the 60-fold loss.

Comparison of the average dry-weight biomass of arthropods caught per 12-h day in 10 ground (A) and canopy (B) traps within the same sampling area in the Luquillo rainforest.

The U.S. federal budget deficit rose in fiscal 2018 to the highest level in six years as spending climbed, the Trump administration said Monday. The deficit jumped to $779 billion, $113 billion or 17 percent higher than the previous fiscal period, according to a statement from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. It was larger than any year since 2012, when it topped $1 trillion. The budget shortfall rose to 3.9 percent of U.S. GDP. The deficit increased by $70 billion less than anticipated in a report published in July, according to the two officials.

Federal revenue rose only slightly, by $14 billion after Republicans chopped tax rates for corporations and most individuals. Outlays climbed by $127 billion, or 3.2 percent. A spike in defense spending, as well as increases for Medicaid, Social Security and disaster relief, contributed to the increase.

Not only do banks earn free money on excess reserves, they can borrow money and make guaranteed free money on that.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis discusses the Carry Trade in Liquidity: “The IOER [interest on excess reserves] has been the effective ceiling of other short-term interest rates. The figure above compares the IOER with overnight rates on deposits and repos. As we can see, the IOER has mostly remained above these two rates, implying that (at least some) banks have been able to borrow funds overnight, deposit them at the Fed and earn a spread, in essence engaging in carry trade in liquidity markets.”

How Much Free Money?

While the Fed has been busy giving banks free money by paying interest on excess reserves, banks in the EU have suffered with negative interest rates, essentially taking money from banks and making them more insolvent. If the goal was to bail out the banks at public expense (and it was), it’s clear Bernanke had a far better plan than the ECB.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is in an unenviable position. Folks expect him to fine-tune interest rates to keep the economy going and inflation tame but he can’t make things much better — only worse. Growth is nearly 3% and unemployment is at its lowest level since 1969. What inflation we have above the Fed target of 2% is driven largely by oil prices and those by forces beyond the influence of U.S. economic conditions — OPEC politics, U.S. sanctions on Iran, and dystopian political forces in Venezuela and a few other garden spots. When the current turbulence in oil markets recedes, we are likely in for a period of headline inflation below 2%, just as those forces are now driving prices higher now.

Overall, long-term inflation has settled in at the Fed target of about 2%. The Fed should not obsess about it but keep a watchful eye. Amid all this, Powell’s inflation compass has gone missing. The Phillips curve, as he puts it, may not be dead but just resting. To my thinking, it’s in a coma if it was ever alive at all. That contraption is a shorthand equation sitting atop a pyramid of more fundamental behavioral relationships. Those include the supply and demand for domestic workers and in turn, an historically large contingent labor force of healthy prime-age adults sitting on the sidelines, the shifting skill requirements of a workplace transformed by artificial intelligence and robotics, import prices influenced by weak growth in Europe and China, and immigration.

Of course, Mariner Powell has his North Star — what economists affectionately call R* (R-Star), but it is no longer at a fixed position in Powell’s sky. R* is the federal funds rate that neither encourages the economy to speed up or slow down. However, with businesses needing much less capital to get started or grow these days and for decades China and Germany—the second and fourth largest economies globally—racking up current account surpluses and savings to invest abroad, it is no wonder the forces of supply and demand have been driving R* down to historically low levels.

Facebook’s UK tax bill has tripled to £15.8m – but the social media giant will see an immediate cut because of a tax credit. The final bill comes to £7.4m, since Facebook will see tax relief of £8.4m after awarding shares to employees. In 2016, Facebook’s tax bill rose to £5.1m, following a major overhaul of the social media firm’s tax structure. However, the company’s profits only climbed by £4m year-on-year from £58.4m to £62.7m in 2017. The company’s UK office provides marketing services and sales and engineering support to the company. Facebook’s revenue rose by a third year-on-year to £1.2bn in 2017, because of increased revenues from inter-company and advertising reseller services in 2017.

“We have changed the way we report tax so that revenue from customers supported by our UK teams is recorded in the UK and any taxable profit is subject to UK corporation tax,” said Facebook’s Northern Europe vice-president, Steve Hatch. [..] The publication of Facebook’s 2017 tax accounts follows extensive criticism from policymakers and the media over the last 12 months of how much tax tech giants typically pay in Europe. Large technology companies have been condemned for moving sales through other countries and paying modest amounts of tax in the UK.

WikiLeaks supporters were thrilled to hear that Ecuador would restore Julian Assange’s internet connection. But his hosts – who have in some ways become his jailers – reportedly imposed a long list of restrictions on his behavior. While stating that he is allowed to exercise his “right of communication and freedom of expression,” a nine-page document already leaked online forbids the journalist from engaging in political activity or doing anything to interfere in the affairs of other states. The document expressly states that Ecuador cannot be held liable for the content of Assange’s communications, but nevertheless prohibits him from engaging in activities that might damage the relationship between Ecuador and other states.

Assange’s communications were cut seven months ago, after he criticized Spanish authorities’ treatment of voters during the Catalan independence referendum. Assange must pay for his own WiFi. He must use only his own devices, absent written government permission, and provide the embassy with serial number, model number, and brand name for those devices. He must also pay for his own medical evaluations, with the option of transferring to a hospital in case of an emergency – an option repeatedly denied him by UK authorities, who refused to guarantee safe passage without arrest in the event of such a transfer. Assange’s health has been the subject of much concern during his six-year confinement in the Embassy.

Visitors are also slapped with new restrictions. They must submit visit requests in writing to the embassy chief, giving their name, nationality, profession and place of work, reason for visiting, email and social media accounts, and even the serial numbers for phones and other devices they wish to bring inside. The new rules even mandate the collection of IMEIs, unique identification numbers specific to a phone handset. While repeat visitors receive a less restrictive screening process, they can have their access revoked at any time without an explanation. All visitor data will be turned over to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other unspecified parties.

The restrictions include a threat to use UK police to arrest visitors or seize communications equipment should the journalist violate the lengthy list of rules. Adding insult to injury, the embassy threatened to remove Assange’s cat to a shelter should they decide he is not cleaning up after the animal properly.

A Brexit deal now looks unlikely until just before Christmas after Theresa May admitted “weeks” may be needed to break the deadlock in talks with Brussels. The delay was also signalled by Ireland’s prime minister who warned of log-jammed negotiations dragging into December, increasing concern that stalled talks could simply collapse into a “disaster” no-deal situation. In a veiled swipe at Brexiteers, European Council President Donald Tusk said solving the vexed issue of the Irish border had proved “more complicated than some may have expected” and said no deal is now “more likely than ever”.

A further sign of slippage came when the EU confirmed it would take a decision this week on whether a special summit once proposed for November to publicly seal a Brexit deal, will be needed given the state of talks. But despite the deadlock, Ms May again came under intense pressure from Conservative Eurosceptics to refuse anything resembling the EU’s proposals, amid signs she is diluting her stance to secure a deal. The October summit was once supposed to be the moment a withdrawal deal was locked in, with expectations already having slipped to a potential specially arranged meeting in November – even under those circumstances the outline would have had to have been agreed at this week’s meeting.

A no-deal Brexit is “more likely than ever before”, the president of the European Council has warned, ahead of a make-or-break summit of EU leaders in Brussels. Donald Tusk, who has described this week’s top-level meeting as “the moment of truth”, said Brexit had “proven to be more complicated than some may have expected”. But he said that “that we are preparing for a no-deal scenario must not, under any circumstances, lead us away from making every effort to reach the best agreement possible”.

Mr Tusk’s warning, made in a letter to EU leaders formally inviting them to the summit, comes a day after negotiations between the European Commission and UK Government hit a a wall over the question of how to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland. Over dinner on Wednesday night the heads of state or government of the 27 remaining EU member states will decide whether there is any pointing holding a special Brexit summit in November – or whether the horse has already bolted. It is now confirmed that Theresa May will address the 27 leaders before the dinner in a last-ditch bid to win them over; though she will not be allowed into the main discussion itself.

The Syrian civil war has always been devilishly complex, with multiple actors following different scripts, but in the past few months it appeared to be winding down. The Damascus government now controls 60 percent of the country and the major population centers, the Islamic State has been routed, and the rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are largely cornered in Idilb Province in the country’s northwest. But suddenly the Americans moved the goal posts—maybe—the Russians have fallen out with the Israelis, the Iranians are digging in their heels, and the Turks are trying to multi-task with a home front in disarray. So the devil is still very much at work in a war that has lasted more than seven years, claimed up to 500,000 lives, displaced millions of people, destabilized an already fragile Middle East, and is far from over.

There are at least three theaters in the Syrian war, each with its own complexities: Idilb in the north, the territory east of the Euphrates River, and the region that abuts the southern section of the Golan Heights. Just sorting out the antagonists is daunting. Turks, Iranians, Americans and Kurds are the key actors in the east. Russians, Turks, Kurds and Assad are in a temporary standoff in the north. And Iran, Assad and Israel are in a faceoff near Golan, a conflict that has suddenly drawn in Moscow. Assad’s goals are straightforward: reunite the country under the rule of Damascus and begin re-building Syria’s shattered cities. The major roadblock to this is Idilb, the last large concentration of anti-Assad groups, Jihadists linked with al-Qaeda, and a modest Turkish occupation force representing Operation Olive Branch. The province, which borders Turkey in the north, is mountainous and re-taking it promises to be difficult.

For the time being there is a stand down. The Russians cut a deal with Turkey to demilitarize the area around Idilb city, neutralize the jihadist groups, and re-open major roads. The agreement holds off a joint Assad-Russian assault on Idilb, which would have driven hundreds of thousands of refugees into Turkey and likely have resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties. But the agreement is temporary—about a month—because Russia is impatient to end the fighting and begin the reconstruction. However, it is hard to see how the Turks are going to get a handle on the bewildering number of groups packed into the province, some of which they have actively aided for years. Ankara could bring in more soldiers, but Turkey already has troops east of the Euphrates and is teetering on the edge of a major economic crisis.

Yes, you have every right to be outraged at the disgraceful treatment of children on America’s borders. But that does not give you the right to NOT be outraged by what America has done and is today still doing to children in, just to name a few places, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Be outraged, but don’t make it an echo chamber issue. Because if you do, you, too, are in a cage.

So if you see the wives of former presidents speak out about the child separation policies, ask yourself where they get the moral authority to speak out on such issues, after their husbands have bombed the crap out of many countries, killing many many children in the process. And don’t let’s get started about Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

Presently in Yemen, 20 million people depend on humanitarian aid, and the US are helping Saudi Arabia et al bomb the only port left through which that aid can reach them, to smithereens. 8.5 million Yemenis are already starving, and some 3 million of them are children. Where is your outrage over that?

Where is the outrage over the American and international treatment of Julian Assange, who has been in the Ecuador embassy in London for six years today? Where is it?

Don’t get coaxed into selective outrage by your news media, who like nothing better than to tell you what to be outraged by, and what not. If you allow that to happen, you have lost your freedom and your independence. Ask why they tell you a certain story at the moment they tell it. Ask why they tell it the way they do.

Yes, it has come to this. Every single story you read or hear needs to be scrutinized. Because there’s an agenda behind all of them, left, right or middle. And because the media have figured out that constantly driving you from one selective outrage to another is very profitable for them. Critical thought is not.

Yes, there are sociopaths in the Trump administration. But that’s nothing new. There have been sociopaths in every administration. It’s how our political systems work. Sh*t floats to the top.

Yes, US border policies have intensified. But whatever you think of that, migrants and refugees are not a new issue. Nor are the reasons why people flee their homes and communities. Whether it’s Africa or Central America, people flee because of what western governments, military and intelligence services have done to their homelands.

And until we stop doing that, they will keep coming. So much of our prosperity and power is derived directly from other people’s poverty and despair. So much of our wealth has been stolen from other people’s resources. If you want to be outraged at something or someone, start with yourself. Start thinking.

What is happening today is awful. But so many awful things happened in the past that you never showed outrage about. And yet these things are all inextricably linked. One leads to another.

America shouldn’t be outraged about Trump without being outraged about its entire political system, and all of its actors. Without that, outrage about Trump has no meaning, and will lead to nothing at all. Or rather, it will lead to a more divided country, full of people played for profit and political games.

The US invasion of Vietnam ended to a large extent because of protests in the streets. Perhaps that is what is needed once again. But the underlying issues, the ones that had led to the invasion in the first place, were not solved then. And that is what it is all about.

Nor is it an American problem per se. Europe is just as culpable. Children drowning, children in cages, what’s the difference, in the end it all comes from the same mindset. Which needs a radical reset. But what are the odds of that happening?

Our cultures are based on exploiting other peoples and nations, and then telling ourselves we deserve what we have. How are you going to change that? The only way to resolve the global refugee problem is to make sure people have a future where they are born. And the only thing we actually do is to make that impossible.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s effective house arrest in London. He cannot move around in public, because he fears he will be arrested and extradited to America — a daunting prospect, since a UN special rapporteur described Chelsea Manning’s treatment by that country’s justice system as torture. Assange is divisive. Hawks wish him nothing but misfortune and a stretch in jail. According to journalist John Pilger, a leaked official memo says: “Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.” If you stand at the other end of the spectrum, Assange is a hero who revealed how our world really works.

Consequently, he has been relentlessly targeted. Hilary Clinton has contributed to this process, as Assange highlighted the Clintons’ links with Saudi Arabia and the multimillion donations that kingdom made to their foundation, after she, as secretary of state, sanctioned an $80bn Saudi arms deal. Assange remains, despite illegal efforts to revoke it, an Australian citizen, but he has not enjoyed the support a person who has not been charged with anything, much less convicted of anything, might expect from a democracy. These are indeed murky waters, but Assange’s ordeal reconfirms a truth: News is something someone, somewhere, does not want published. That’s why he is such a threat.

The UN spokesman said on Monday that tens of thousands of residents have fled the fighting along Yemen’s western coastline, where Yemeni fighters backed by a Saudi-led coalition are engaged in fierce battles with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN secretary-general, told reporters on Monday that about 5,200 families, or around 26,000 people, have fled the fighting and sought safety within their own districts or in other areas in Hodeida governorate. ‘‘The number is expected to increase as hostilities continue,’’ he said. Emirati troops, along with irregular and loyalist forces in Yemen, have been fighting against Houthis for Hodeida since Wednesday.

Coalition warplanes rained missiles and bombs on Houthi positions near Hodeida airport, in the city’s south. The offensive for Hodeida has faced criticism from international aid groups, who fear a protracted fight could force a shutdown of the city’s port and potentially tip millions into starvation. About 70 percent of Yemen’s food enters via the port, as well as the bulk of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies. Around two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid, and 8.4 million are already at risk of starving.

Rumors are again swirling of an impending false flag chemical weapons attack in Syria, just as they did shortly before the highly suspicious Douma case in April. Warnings from Syrian and Russian intelligence, as well as US war ship movements and an uptick in US funding for the Al Qaeda propaganda firm known as the White Helmets, give these warnings a fair bit of weight. Since the US war machine has both a known regime change agenda in Syria and an extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to justify military interventionism, there’s no legitimate reason to give it the benefit of the doubt on this one. These warnings are worth taking seriously.

So some people are understandably nervous. The way things are set up now, it is technically possible for the jihadist factions inside Syria and their allied imperialist intelligence and defense agencies to keep targeting civilians with chemical weapons and blaming the Assad government for them until they pull one off that is so outrageous that it enables the mass media to manufacture public support for a full-scale assault on Damascus. This would benefit both the US-centralized empire which has been plotting regime change in Syria for decades and the violent Islamist extremists who seek control of the region. It also creates the very real probability of a direct military confrontation with Syria’s allies, including Russia.

But the appropriate response to the threat of a world war erupting in Syria is not really fear, if you think about it. The most appropriate response to this would be unmitigated, howling rage at the western sociopaths who created this situation in the first place.

Legendary global macro trader Paul Tudor Jones is warning that asset prices are too high. And furthermore, he’s concerned about what the next recession might look like. He shared his thoughts on Monday during a conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as part of the firm’s “Talks at GS” series. The hedge fund billionaire, who rarely gives interviews or makes public comments on the markets, cautioned that across asset classes “you have to be thinking this is a highly dubious sustainable price.” Jones doesn’t think the low interest rates we have now due to easy monetary policy are sustainable over time. He said that interest rate policy is “crazy.” He further argued that the Trump administration’s stimulative fiscal policy isn’t sustainable either.

“You look at prices of stocks, real estate, anything,” he said. “We’re going to have to mean revert to a normal real rate of interest with a normal term premium that’s existed for 250 years. We’re going to have to get back to that. We’re going to have to get back to a sustainable fiscal policy and that probably means the price of assets goes down in the very long run.” In the short run, the market is “jacked up and ready to go,” he said. Blankfein added that it’s like “pouring lighter fluid on an already lit fire.” During the financial crisis, central banks had a lot of room to ease monetary policy and governments had more flexibility to push stimulative fiscal policy. Today, there’s less room and flexibility.

“The next recession is really frightening because we don’t have any stabilizers,” Jones said. “We’ll have monetary policy, which will exhaust really quickly, but we don’t have any fiscal stabilizers.”

President Donald Trump has requested the United States Trade Representative to identify $200 billion worth of Chinese goods for additional tariffs at a rate of 10 percent. The new duties will go into effect “if China refuses to change its practices, and also if it insists on going forward with the new tariffs that it has recently announced,” the president said in a statement provided by the White House late on Monday. Beijing has pledged to fight back if Trump goes ahead with the new tariffs. U.S. stock index futures fell following the news, while Asian equity markets were mixed. It’s the latest development in escalating trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

On Friday, the U.S. announced a 25 percent tariff on up to $50 billion of Chinese products, prompting Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration to respond witha 25 percent tariff on $34 billion of U.S. goods. “It’s one thing to retaliate with $50 billion here and $50 billion there but when the [U.S.] president trots out another $200 billion, that’s quite concerning,” Max Baucus, former U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, told CNBC. “This reminds me little bit of an old western … If there’s a gunfight trade war, somebody’s going to get hurt,” he continued: “Trump is going to have to find some way to back down and let China save face so that both sides can back down gradually and respectfully.”

Perhaps nobody knows what President Trump will do next, including President Trump, but right now it looks like he has successfully maneuvered China into a trade trap. The goal is to slow China’s economy such that military modernization slows and its economy cannot catch up with the United States. Meanwhile, implementation of this strategy is called “Beijing’s playbook” and the whole time President Trump speaks positively about Xi Jinping and China’s help in other areas. Bloomberg: Xi to Counter Trump Blow for Blow in Unwanted Trade War “The Chinese view this as an exercise in self-flagellation, meaning that the country that wins a trade war is the country that can endure most pain,” said Andrew Polk, co-founder of research firm Trivium China in Beijing. China “thinks it can outlast the U.S. They don’t have to worry about an election in November, let alone two years from now.”

This is the mistake autocrats always make about Western governments and the United States. They view the messy and inefficient political system (intentionally designed that way to protect liberty) as a weakness. They think politicians care more about elections than anything else. They see the difficulty in reaching consensus as a weakness. However, they miss the fact that democratic governments enjoy greater legitimacy. If the U.S. reaches a majority in favor of confronting China on trade, then President Trump has the far stronger political hand. Confronting China on trade raises President Trump’s popularity. His base and independent voters favor this policy. Democrats oppose him because he is Trump, but they would lose votes if the only issue in November was “Confront China on trade, yes or no?”

Let’s be clear: It’s not just Argentina. But Argentina is the most elegant example. The exodus of the hot money from emerging markets where cheap dollar-debts were used to fund pet projects and jack up leverage is – once again – in full swing. Cheap dollar-debt in emerging markets is an old sin that, like all old sins, is repeated endlessly. The outcome is always trouble. But during the act, it sure is a lot of fun for everyone. The exodus of the hot money is even gripping the non-basket-case emerging economies of Asia where it’s causing the worst indigestion since 2008.

Bloomberg: “Overseas funds are pulling out of six major Asian emerging equity markets at a pace unseen since the global financial crisis of 2008 – withdrawing $19 billion from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand so far this year.” While emerging markets shone in the first quarter, suggesting resilience to Federal Reserve tightening, that image has shattered over the past two months. With American money market funds now offering yields around 2% – where 10-year Treasuries were just last September – and prospects for more Fed hikes, the bar for heading into riskier assets has been raised.”

“It’s not a great set-up for emerging markets,” James Sullivan, head of Asia ex-Japan equities research at JPMorgan Chase, told Bloomberg. “We’ve still only priced in about two thirds of the US rate increases we expect to see over the next 12 months. So the Fed is continuing to get more hawkish, but the market still hasn’t caught up.” [..] “Dollar funding of emerging market economies has been in turmoil for months now,” Patel wrote – because yeah, the era of the cheap dollar is over, and investors should have figured that out two-and-a-half years ago when the Fed started hiking rates. But the market didn’t want to believe that the Fed would actually do it. And suddenly over the past two months, it downs on these geniuses that the Fed has actually been hiking rates and will continue to do so for some time.

Patel not only blamed the QE unwind but also the simultaneous and massive issuance of new Treasury debt by the US government to fund its ballooning deficits. This new issuance of Treasuries “will absorb such a large share of dollar liquidity that a crisis in the rest of the dollar bond markets is inevitable.”

[..] I wanted a Germany that was hegemonic and efficient, not authoritarian and caught up in a European Ponzi scheme. That was in 2013. Two years later, in March 2015, I wrote an article, while Greece’s finance minister, referring to the first and second bailout loans, of 2010 and 2012. Allow me to quote from it: “The fact is that Greece had no right to borrow from German – or any other European – taxpayers at a time when its public debt was unsustainable. Before Greece took on any loans, it should have initiated debt restructuring and undergone a partial default on debt owed to its private-sector creditors. But this “radical” argument was largely ignored at the time.

Similarly, European citizens should have demanded that their governments refuse even to consider transferring private losses to them. But they failed to do so, and the transfer was effected soon after. The result was the largest taxpayer-backed loan in history, provided on the condition that Greece pursue such strict austerity that its citizens have lost one-quarter of their incomes, making it impossible to repay private or public debts. The ensueing – and ongoing – humanitarian crisis has been tragic… Animosity among Europeans is at an all-time high, with Greeks and Germans, in particular, having descended to the point of moral grandstanding, mutual finger-pointing, and open antagonism. This toxic blame game benefits only Europe’s enemies.”

When French President Emmanuel Macron laid out a sweeping vision for eurozone reform last September, he spoke of “rebuilding Europe”, with a common budget for the euro nations and a single minister to oversee it all. The proposals he will discuss when he sits down with German Chancellor Angela Merkel outside Berlin on Tuesday will be far less ambitious, with deep differences between the two European powerhouses. Many economists agree with Macron that fundamental reforms are needed to strengthen the eurozone and insulate the single currency — the most potent symbol of Europe’s integration — from future crises, like the 2010-13 sovereign debt contagion that nearly tore the euro apart.

But Merkel has limited room to act due to political pressure at home, and is always at pains to ensure France and Germany aren’t pushing ahead with plans that have no deep backing from the rest of the European Union. Macron and Merkel will discuss a separate budget for the 19 countries that share the single currency but much smaller than he wanted. Then there are gaps in opinion over a fund to calm bond markets in a crisis and a backstop for the banking system. “Things are going in the right direction, but the proposals we’re getting from the Germans aren’t sufficient,” said a French official who acknowledged there were deep differences between the two sides.

A German official said there were still big questions about what sort of agreement Tuesday’s meeting would produce on the budget for the euro zone. The official said Merkel’s recent political troubles over migration policy could mean she is less inclined to make concessions to the French leader. Besides the disagreement between France and Germany, it is also the nature of negotiations between the eurozone countries that grand ideas get chipped away at until a compromise is reached that satisfies all parties.

“Where Germany has trading partners willing to borrow big to buy Mercedes and Beemers, the US has the world’s reserve currency, which acts as an unlimited credit card for our entitlement state and military/industrial empire.”

Europe is frequently held up as an example of how the rest of the world should behave on a variety of issues. But this comparison misses at least two things: First, “Europe” is actually a lot of different countries in a lot of different situations. Second, much of what seems to work over there only does so because it’s being financed with ever-increasing amounts of debt. For countries, as for individuals, borrowing money is fun at first but beyond a certain point becomes debilitating, as interest payments begin to crowd out everything else. That’s where a growing number of Europe’s failed states now find themselves, with overly-generous pensions and overly-restrictive labor laws making it virtually impossible to run a functioning market-based economy.

The result: Fewer good jobs and more frustrated voters – especially young ones who have seen only the downside of the current system – and the resulting rise of populist political parties that recognize the problems without offering coherent solutions, thus guaranteeing even more chaos in the future. As Today’s Wall Street Journal notes, in Italy and Greece, nearly a third of young adults not only aren’t working but aren’t enrolled in school or training. What are they doing? Apparently just sitting around and stewing about life’s injustice. As for where they’re sitting and stewing, in Greece, Italy and Spain it’s now normal for adults all the way into their 30s to live with their parents, largely because they can’t find work that pays enough to afford a house, car and other requirements of independent life.

As for Germany, which looks great by comparison, keep in mind that a big part of its economic outperformance is due to other EU countries borrowing huge amounts of money to buy German exports. When the latter run out of money – a point which is clearly coming – Germany suffers twice, once when it loses important customers and again when its banks, having lent trillions of euros to Italy, Spain, et al, have to eat those losses. But bad-mouthing Europe should not be seen as implicit praise of the US. We, like Germany, have an advantage that’s both unfair and temporary. Where Germany has trading partners willing to borrow big to buy Mercedes and Beemers, the US has the world’s reserve currency, which acts as an unlimited credit card for our entitlement state and military/industrial empire.

Spain’s new Socialist government is determined to remove the remains of Francisco Franco from a vast mausoleum near Madrid and turn it into a place of “reconciliation” for a country still coming to terms with the dictator’s legacy. “We don’t have a date yet, but the government will do it,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said late Monday during his first television interview since being sworn in on June 2 after toppling his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy in a confidence vote. He recalled that a non-binding motion approved last year in parliament called for Franco’s remains to be exhumed from the massive Valley of the Fallen mausoleum some 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Madrid and the site turned into a “memorial of the victims of fascism”.

“Spain can’t allow symbols that divide Spaniards. Something that is unimaginable in Germany or Italy, countries that also suffered fascist dictatorships, should also not be imaginable in our country,” Sanchez added. Earlier on Monday Socialist party spokesman Oscar Puente said the mausoleum should be transformed into a “place of reconciliation, of memory, for all Spaniards, and not of apology for the dictatorship.” Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist from the end of the country’s 1936-39 civil war until his death in 1975, when he was buried inside a basilica drilled into the side of a mountain at the Valley of the Fallen, one of Europe’s largest mass graves.

The desire to judge people’s motives rather than addressing their needs is a “British disease”. We have been suffering from it for hundreds of years, cycling endlessly through repeated cycles of generosity and harshness. Each cycle ends in public outrage and an abrupt reversal: but the memory eventually fades, and the disease reappears in a new form. In this post, I outline the tragic history of Britain’s repeated attempts to “categorise the poor”.

[..] worst of all, using rules and sanctions to compel the genuinely work-shy to work diverts attention and resources away from those who really need help. And it unfairly stigmatises the vast majority of those who are not working, or who are not working as many hours as we think they should, whether through unemployment, sickness or disability. Study after study has shown that in general, people want to work. The problem is that suitable jobs aren’t always available. And yet there remains a prevalent view, even among people who should know better, that people must be compelled to work, or to work harder, with harsh treatment. But today’s sanctions for those who won’t or can’t work are mild compared to the punishments of old: why should they be any more successful?

We would do better to concentrate our attention on helping those who genuinely want to work to find fulfilling, productive and well-paid jobs. And we should also stop trying to decide whether someone “deserves” social support. We have been trying to distinguish between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor for eight hundred years, and we are no better able to make that judgement now than we were in the fourteenth century, or the sixteenth, or the nineteenth. It is time to give up this fruitless attempt to judge people’s motives. Simply provide everyone with a basic income so that they can afford to live, then let them get on with whatever they want to do.

More than 4,000 public buildings and spaces in England are being sold off every year, with more than 7,000 others at risk over the next five years, a charity has said. Locality says the majority of the sites being offloaded by local authorities are sold to private developers for the highest price, forever lost to communities around them. The charity wants the government to create a £200m-a-year community ownership fund for the next five years to help preserve the buildings and spaces for the use of local people. Tony Armstrong, its chief executive, said: “This is a sell-off on a massive scale. We know that many of the buildings being lost have valuable community uses.

“Everyone of us can think of a local public building or outside space we love and use, from libraries to lidos and town halls to youth centres. They are owned by the public and they’re being sold off for short-term gain to fill holes in council budgets. “Many hundreds of local community groups are stepping up and fighting for community ownership. But they urgently need support and help with startup costs if they are to compete with the commercial developers.” The Great British Sell Off report is published on Tuesday and is based on freedom of information requests sent to all 353 local authorities in England. Locality received 55 responses on the number of buildings and spaces sold between the financial years 2012-13 and 2016-17, as well as 127 replies about sites identified as surplus over the next five years, extrapolating the results to obtain national totals.

Mr. Peterson laid it out nicely: identity politics assigns everyone to ethnic, racial, and sexual groups, and all the human relations among them amount to never-ending battles for political power. Nothing else matters. Individuals especially don’t matter, only the group. And no group has abused its power more than European white men. This animating idea comes out of the mid-20th century “post-structural critical theorists” Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose Marxian views emerged conveniently at a time when women and non-white people were vying for departmental chairs in the college humanities and social science programs, and thus have two generations been indoctrinated.

Well, if human relations are solely about power, than exercising power over others is all that matters. Hence, the key to identity politics: it’s all about coercion, making others do your will by threat of force and force itself. These days, the main threat is depriving heretics and apostates of their livelihood. That’s what happened to Brett Weinstein at Evergreen U in Washington State last year, and to Jordan Peterson himself at the U of Toronto, when he objected loudly and publicly to a new Canadian federal law that sought to punish citizens who refused to use the new menu of personal pronouns for the rapidly multiplying new gender categories (e.g. ze, zir, they, xem, nem, hir, nir….)

Both Weinstein and Peterson refused to be coerced and found themselves inadvertently leading a movement against the pervasive, creeping coercion of our time — which has now spread from the campuses into corporate life, with the HR departments working overtime to enforce thought among employees, because company profits are at stake (e.g. Starbucks day-off for “diversity and inclusion training”).

Fewer people sought asylum in the European Union last year, although numbers remain higher than before the arrival of 1 million people in 2015 triggered a political crisis that continues to divide Europe. Showing a sharp drop in asylum claims, the latest report from the EU’s asylum office was published on Monday after emergency talks in the German government over asylum policy and a bitter standoff between EU nations over a migrant rescue ship that eventually docked in Spain after being banned from Italy and Malta. The EU’s asylum office counted 728,470 applications for international protection in 2017, a 44% reduction on the 1.3m applications the previous year.

More than 1 million people entered the EU in 2015, many fleeing the war in Syria. Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan remain the most frequent countries of origin for asylum seekers, accounting for 29% of all claims. The downward trend of asylum claims continued in the first four months of 2018, the EU asylum office said, although numbers have still not returned to pre-crisis levels. About 460,000 people applied for asylum in EU countries in 2013. The fall in asylum applications reflects a sharp drop in people making the hazardous journey over the eastern Mediterranean to Greece and the central Mediterranean to Italy, although there has been an increase in people travelling from west Africa to Spain, albeit from a lower base.

Germany continues to receive more applications for asylum than any other country in Europe, with 222,560 claims in 2017, folowed by Italy, France and Greece. The UK was in fifth place, with 33,780 applications, accounting for 4.6% of all EU asylum claims. But the backlog remains high: 954,100 claims are awaiting a decision, including 443,640 in Germany, according to the EU asylum office.

This is something I’ve commented on many times. Like two months ago, when I wrote:

“As for Donald Trump, as much as we would like to engage in constructive criticism of the man and his government, we find we no longer can. The anti-Trump echo-chamber has turned so deafening that any intelligent debate about his policies is being drowned out amid the never ending flow of fake news and half truths and innuendo and empty smears that US media continue to spout. With a brief lull when the bombs fell on Syria.

Thank you, New York Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC. Thank you for killing the entire discussion, thank you for killing off journalism. There is a lot to say about Trump, much of it critical, but we can no longer open our mouths. Because we don’t want to be in the same camp as you. Life in the echo chamber has given us vertigo. We had to get out.”

Jim Kunstler thanked me for saying that. He very much feels the same way. Nothing has changed. They’re still at it, and we still can’t get a word in edgewise. I was thinking earlier today that the best the MSM can do to promote its own case is to praise Trump from time to time. Because that is the only way they could attract some ears and eyes from outside their echo chamber.

They won’t do it. Being negative about the US president makes them too much money. It leaves us with a situation in which the one half of America that reads and hears New York Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC has become fully isolated from the other half. Yes, this is risky. But this, too, will be blamed on Trump.

Meanwhile, border policies where children are forcefully separated form their parents need criticism and condemnation from all of the nation. But there is nobody left who can reach the entire nation. A year and a half of 24/7 unproven allegations about collusion with Russia has seen to that.

Therefore, when the Intercept wrote about a Human Rights Watch report last month in Obama’s Deportation Policy Was Even Worse Than We Thought, the MSM don’t cover it, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. But when Trump uses the same ICE machinery to scare potential immigrants away, it’s suddenly considered newsworthy.

Oh, and France uses the exact same scare tactics, going as far as ripping children’s soles from their shoes. We should all condemn these atrocities, and make them stop. But it’s not going to happen if you guys insist on making it an anti-Trump thing, because half the country won’t listen to any more of that.

Journalism and news media must be a force to unite a nation, not one that divides it simply because there’s -more- profit in that.

The neverending Trump innuendo reached another new high in the North Korea meeting, with the ‘media’ competing with each other to find yet another terrible mistake or intentional screw-up by the man who is President of all Americans (like it or not). A feeding frenzy on nothingburgers.

Trump was accused of hob-nobbing with dictators. Excuse me, but all US presidents have done that. He wasn’t being tough enough, he was giving far too much away with nothing in return. Well, that’s not how South Koreans see it, and this concerns them a whole lot more than a bunch of ‘reporters’ covering the beltway.

Truth is, Trump did a good job, everything went well, he put Kim Jong-un in a position where the latter will have to deliver on denuclearization, or face the -international- consequences. It is quite the achievement, but if you wake up every single morning looking for more bad things to say about someone, yes, chances are you miss the good things.

You’re also probably missing the Saudi, US-supported, attacks on Hodeidah, the port city that is Yemen’s last lifeline to the world, and the only chance millions of people have of escaping a famine not seen since the Middle Ages.

That is the kind of thing that should be on your front pages, and opening your news shows, not that North Korea happens to have a border with Russia nudge nudge wink wink, and Trump saluted some Korean general.

America needs real news and real journalism, and it needs it badly. Instead it has an increasingly divisive set of well-paid propagandists who break the country ever further apart. The OIG report that came out yesterday confirms this more and better than anything.

When the country’s own ‘intelligence’ conspires to influence the political process, while the media report on outside influence only, then yes, you have a problem. As I was writing earlier today, you have to wonder how many people will still be working at the FBI by the end of the year.

Something else I’ve said before: the only hope of survival the MSM have in the age of the interwebs is to be brutally honest and open. Real news and real journalism. Because simply spouting opinions is something they will be trumped on by the many many millions of people with social media accounts who already do that every day, anonymously, and for free.

The old media don’t stand a chance against that army. The only thing that can save them is the truth.